Hossein Modarressi
Senior Research Scholar
Dr Modarressi attended the Islamic seminary at Qum (Iran), then pursued his secular education which ended with a Ph.D. in Islamic law from Oxford University. He was appointed to the Princeton faculty in 1986.
His previous research interest was primarily Iranian history, particularly local histories and historical documents on which subjects he has several published books and many articles. Currently, Modarressi’s research centers on the two fields of Islamic law and Shi'ite doctrine, with manuscripts to be completed in both. He has supervised dissertations on such topics as: final causality in Avicenna's philosophy, legal maxims in Islamic and American law, women and hadith transmission in Islamic history, boundaries of the early Shi'ite community, the Islamic law of rebellion, an ontological history of the school of the oneness of being, Fatima al-Zahra in the collective memory of the Muslims, and the image of the artist in Islamic society.