`Abdul-`Aziz Ad-Duri

The "dean" of Arab historians is dead.  Not a word about this great scholar in any Western publication.  The New York Times had 3/4 of a page devoted to the marriage of Prince Harry or Henry or Williams in UK.  I kid you not.  The style section of the NYT had a two page spread on Kim Kardashian.  What do you expect.  `Abdul-`Aziz Ad-Duri is not only a historian of the Arab world: but he was a historian of Arab history.  He was a critical historian of history by Arabs.  He was quite daring in his critical look at the early Arab historians including the sirat of Ibn Ishaq of the prophet (see his introduction to An Inquiry in the formation of the Science of History Among the Arabs (in Arabic).  Ad-Duri believed that it was possible to write a history of the Arabs, consistent with his Arab nationalist views.  He chaired the department of history in Baghdad University but later relocated to Jordan.