Fuat Sezgin

Fuat Sezgin (24 October 1924 – 30 June 2018) was a Turkish scholar and researcher who specialized in the history of science in the medieval Islamic world. He was professor for the History of Natural Science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and the founder and honorary director of the Institute for the History of the Arab Islamic Sciences there.¹ He also created museums in Frankfurt and Istanbul with replicas of historical Arabic-Islamic scientific instruments, tools and maps.² His best known publication is the 17-volume update to the History of the Arabic Written Tradition (Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums), a standard reference in the field.³

Career

Sezgin earned his Ph.D. from Istanbul University under the German Orientalist Hellmut Ritter in 1950. His thesis titled "Buhari’nin Kaynakları"⁴ (The Sources of Al-Bukhari) argued that, contrary to the common belief among European orientalists, Al-Bukhari's edition of collected Hadiths was based on written sources dating back to the 7th century as well as oral history. He obtained a position at Istanbul University, but was dismissed in the wake of the 1960 coup. He moved to Germany in 1961 and started working as a visiting professor at the University of Frankfurt.⁵ He was appointed professor at the university in 1965. His research in Frankfurt focused on Islam's Golden Age of Science. In 1982, Sezgin established the Institute of the History of the Arab Islamic Sciences. Today the Institute houses the most comprehensive collection of texts on the history of Arabic-Islamic science in the world. In 1983 Sezgin also founded a unique museum within the institute, bringing together more than 800 replicas of historical scientific instruments, tools and maps, mostly belonging to the Golden Age of Islamic science. A very similar museum was opened in 2008 in Istanbul, located next to .