Philip Khuri Hitti

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Philip Khuri Hitti (1886 - 1978), born in Shimlan, Lebanon, was a Western scholar of Islam.

1 Biography
2 Works
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Hitti was educated at an American Presbyterian mission school at Suq al-Gharb and at the American University of Beirut. After graduating in 1908 he taught at the American University of Beirut before moving to Columbia University where he taught Semitic languages and won his PhD in 1915. After World War I he returned to American University of Beirut and taught there until 1926. In February 1926 he was offered a Chair at Princeton University which he held until he retired in 1954. He was both Professor of Semitic Literature and Chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages. After formal retirement he accepted a position at Harvard. He also taught in the summer schools at the University of Utah and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He subsequently held a research position at the University of Minnesota. Philip Hiiti almost single handedly created the discipline of Arabic Studies in the United States.

In 1945 he served as an advisor to the Arab delegation at the San Francisco Conference which established the United Nations.

[edit] Works

History of the Arabs
The origins of the Druze people and religion: with extracts from their sacred writings (1928)
An Arab-Syrian Gentlemen in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh (1929)
History of Syria: including Lebanon and Palestine (1957)
The Arabs (1960)
Lebanon in History (1967)
Makers of Arab History (1968)
The Near East in History (1961)
Islam and the West (1962)
Islam: A Way of Life (1970)
Capital cities of Arab Islam (1973)