Mohamed Talbi

Among Talbi's modern interests were religion and politics, Islam and democracy, Islam and human rights, women in Islam and Islam and religious pluralism, in the wider context of his general thinking on Qur'anic exegesis, historical analysis and religious epistemology. In his discussions of these subjects, Talbi made clear his dependence on the Quran and other traditional religious sources, while evincing also an easy incorporation of certain modern Western Ideas. Indeed, Talbi's own description of his upbringing and education in Tunisia, and in particular his doctoral studies in post-War Paris, reflected a relaxed attitude towards synthesising Islamic and modern Western thought, in both of which he possessed the requisite learning to effect such an integration. Talbi died on 1 May 2017.

Near the end of the 1990s, Talbi turned his reflections toward a deep and systematic meditation. His small book called Universality of the Quran is a lucid essay of synthesis and analysis. It is primarily in Talbi's latest writing that the historian adopted the style of a polemicist. Talbi was appointed president of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts between 2011 and 2012.

During thirty years, Talbi has participated in a number of official and personal dialogues with Christians in North Africa and Europe. In an article on Islam and the West, published in 1987, he complains about the current poverty of Muslim initiatives or even responses to Euro-Arab or Muslim-Christian dialogue. In a publication on the subject, he explicitly declared Islam to be open to dialogue with other faiths and cultures. For Talbi, the Muslim-Christian dialogue is not just a social event but a significant religious matter, and he has done everything possible to promote such dialogue in Tunisia and elsewhere.

In 1968, Talbi defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Sorbonne. Entitled The Aghlabid Emirate, a political History, it discusses Tunisia's first Muslim dynasty. Written with clarity and a forcefulness of expression, and supported by solid Arab and Latin sources, Talbi's thesis contributed greatly to a renewed understanding of a key period in the history of Ifriqiya and eastern Maghreb and the region's relationships with southern Italy. It also earned Talbi a place as one of the founders of the new school of Tunisian and Maghreb history.

Mohamed Talbi devoted the best part of his career to teaching and researching medieval Maghreb and Mediterranean history. His profile was that of an atypical intellectual. After a long career teaching in primary and secondary schools, Talbi took and passed the Arab Studies competitive examination. On the eve of Tunisia's independence, he joined the Institute of Higher Education of Tunis. In 1955, he became the first Dean of the School of Letter and Human Sciences of Tunis. He also chaired the school's history department before devoting his full energies as director of the scientific journal Les Cahiers de Tunisie [fr].

Mohamed Talbi (Arabic: محمد الطالبي), (16 September 1921 – 1 May 2017) was a Tunisian historian and professor. He was the author of many books about Islam.

Professor Emeritus at University of Tunis, Mohamed Talbi was a Tunisian historian, Islamologist and scholar who authored a number of books and articles on the history of Islam and the Maghreb. Born in Tunis in 1921 and educated there and later in Paris, Talbi had an illustrious career, both as a historian of medieval North Africa and as a major theoretical thinker on Islam's nature and mission in the modern world.