ROY
P. MOTTAHEDEH was born in New York in 1940 and graduated magna cum laude in History
from Harvard in 1960. He spent the next year travelling in Europe and the Middle East as a
Shaw Travelling Scholar of Harvard University. In 1962, after a year of study, he took the
B.A. examination in Persian and Arabic at Cambridge University in England and received the
E. G. Browne Prize. He then returned to Harvard in order to continue his studies in
Islamic History and Civilization with Sir Hamilton Gibb, whose seminars in Islamic History
and Arabic poetry he attended for the following two years. In 1967 he was elected to the
Harvard Society of Fellows for a three-year term as a Junior Fellow. In 1970 he was
appointed an Assistant Professor at Princeton University and received tenure at that
university in 1976. He was among the first to be chosen as a MacArthur Prize Fellow. He
has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1986 he accepted the appointment as
Professor of Islamic History in the Harvard History Department and from 1987 to 1990 he
was Director of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of two
books, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society and The Mantle of the
Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. He is also the author of numerous articles,
including articles on the Abbasids and the Shu’ubiyah controversy. He resides with
his wife and two children in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Sponsored by The W. Lewis and Helen R. Abbott Lecture Fund. This fund honors W.
Lewis Abbott, a distinguished scholar, teacher, and social advocate who was professor of
economics and sociology at Colorado College until his death in 1949. His wife, Helen
Abbott, was one of the founders and the first president of the League of Women Voters of
Colorado. Helen Abbott died in 1975.
ROY
P. MOTTAHEDEH was born in New York in 1940 and graduated magna cum laude in History
from Harvard in 1960. He spent the next year travelling in Europe and the Middle East as a
Shaw Travelling Scholar of Harvard University. In 1962, after a year of study, he took the
B.A. examination in Persian and Arabic at Cambridge University in England and received the
E. G. Browne Prize. He then returned to Harvard in order to continue his studies in
Islamic History and Civilization with Sir Hamilton Gibb, whose seminars in Islamic History
and Arabic poetry he attended for the following two years. In 1967 he was elected to the
Harvard Society of Fellows for a three-year term as a Junior Fellow. In 1970 he was
appointed an Assistant Professor at Princeton University and received tenure at that
university in 1976. He was among the first to be chosen as a MacArthur Prize Fellow. He
has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1986 he accepted the appointment as
Professor of Islamic History in the Harvard History Department and from 1987 to 1990 he
was Director of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of two
books, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society and The Mantle of the
Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. He is also the author of numerous articles,
including articles on the Abbasids and the Shu’ubiyah controversy. He resides with
his wife and two children in Brookline, Massachusetts.