Mohamed Talbi

Mohamed Talbi (Arabic: محمد الطالبي‎‎), (born in Tunis, September 16, 1921) is a Tunisian historian and professor.

Professor Emeritus at University of Tunis, Mohamed Talbi is a Tunisian historian, Islamologist and scholar who has 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 has 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. Among Talbi's modern interests have been 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 makes 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, reflects a relaxed attitude towards synthesising Islamic and modern Western thought, in both of which he possesses the requisite learning to effect such an integration.

Mohamed Talbi has devoted the best part of his career to teaching an researching medieval Maghreb and Mediterranean history. His profile is 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 departement before devoting his full energies as director of the scientific journal Les Cahier de Tunisie. 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. Prolix and incisive, Talbi has written a considerable number of articles and essays. He is one of a rare few to have addressed the history of slavery, and the key role played by slaves, in agriculture and economy. 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 lucid essay of synthesis and analysis. It is primarily in Talbi's latest writing that the historian has adopted the style of a polemicist. Talbi was appointed president of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts between 2011 and 2012.

Talbi rejects the direct association between Shura and democracy. He argues that, while desirable in itself, shura is from a time and place which had no conception of democracy as we know it. Indeed, says Talbi, neither Islam nor Western civilisation had this democratic conception before the modern period, when democracy, as political idea and practice was born- at least not democracy in our modern meaning of the term. For Talbi, the democracy means the voice of the people determining who rules and how they rule, with the associated notions of universal human rights, freedom of expression, religious pluralism and equality before the law. True democracy is for Talbi the proper political form for our age, as it embodies those values which for him constitute part of the original true Islam.

Talbi is an Officer of the Order of the Republic in Tunisia (1965); Commander of the Order of Merit in Spain (1969); Officer of the Order of Independence in Tunisia (1975); Officer of the Order of Merit in Tunisia (1983) ; Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour in France (1983); Officer of the Order of the Legion of Honour in France (1984); Commander of the Order of Cultural Merit in Tunisia (1987); and Grand Officer of the Order of the Republic in Tunisia (1991).

Talbi has received several major prizes, including : Premio letterario internazionale del Mediterraneo in Italy (1979); The Léopold Lucas Prize in Germany (1985); The Cultural National Prize in Tunisia (1987); The Literature National Prize in Tunisia (1991); Hiroshima Prize for Peace and Cultural in Sweden (1994); The Senator Giovanni Agnelli International Prize in Italy (1997).

• Al-Mukhassass d'Ibn Sïda : études et index, éd. Imprimerie officielle, Tunis, 1956
• Histoire générale de la Tunisie (collective book), tome II « Le Moyen Âge », éd. Société tunisienne de diffusion, Tunis, 1965
• L'émirat aghlabide (186-296/800-909) : histoire politique, éd. Adrien Maisonneuve, Paris, 1966 (ISBN 2-7200-0493-6)
• Biographies aghlabides extraites des Madarik du Cadi Iyād (critical edition), éd. Imprimerie officielle de la République tunisienne, Tunis, 1968
• Ibn Khaldûn et l'Histoire, éd. Société tunisienne de diffusion, Tunis, 1965, rééd. Maison tunisienne de l'édition, Tunis, 1973, rééd. Cartaginoiseries, Carthage, 2006
• Islam en dialogue, éd. Maison tunisienne d'édition, Tunis, 1970
• Islam et dialogue, réflexion sur un thème d'actualité, éd. Maison tunisienne d'édition, Tunis, 1972
• Étude d’histoire ifrîqiyenne et de civilisation musulmane médiévale, éd. Université de Tunis, Tunis, 1982
• Dialog mit Afrika und dem Islam with Léopold Sédar Senghor, éd. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1987
• Réflexions sur le Coran with Maurice Bucaille, éd. Seghers, Paris, 1989 (ISBN 2-232-10148-7)
• Études sur la tolérance (collective book), éd. Beït El Hikma, Carthage, 1995
• Un respect têtu with Olivier Clément, éd. Nouvelle Cité, Paris, 1995 (ISBN 2-85313-188-2)
• Plaidoyer pour un islam moderne, éd. Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1998 (ISBN 2-220-04251-0)
• Penseur libre en islam. Un intellectuel musulman dans la Tunisie de Ben Ali with Gwendoline Jarczyk, éd. Albin Michel, Paris, 2002 (ISBN 2-226-13204-X)
• Universalité du Coran, éd. Actes Sud, Arles, 2002 (ISBN 2-7427-3605-0)
• Oriente-Occidente : cartografías de una distancia, éd. Fondation Marcelino Botín, Santander, 2004
• Réflexion d'un musulman contemporain, éd. Fennec, Casablanca, 2005
• Afin que mon cœur se rassure, éd. Nirvana, Tunis, 2010
• Gaza, barbarie biblique ou de l'extermination sacrée et humanisme coranique, éd. Mohamed Talbi, Tunis, 2010
• L'Islam n'est pas voile, il est culte : rénovation de la pensée musulmane, éd. Cartaginoiseries, Carthage, 2010
• Goulag et démocratie, éd. Mohamed Talbi, Tunis, 2011
• À Benoît XVI, éd. Mohamed Talbi, Tunis, 2011
• Ma religion c'est la liberté : l'islam et les défis de la contemporanéité, éd. Nirvana, Tunis, 2011 (ISBN 978-9973-855-35-0)
• Histoire du Christ. Histoire d’une fraude textes à l’appui, s. éd., Tunis, 2011
• Méditations sur le Coran : Vérité, rationalité, I'jaz scientifique, éd. Mohamed Talbi, Tunis, 2016

• (French) Jean Fontaine, « Recension : Talbi Mohamed, Histoire du Christ, éd. Mohamed Talbi, Tunis, 2011 (555 p.) », Groupe de recherche islamo-chrétien, 20 juin 2011