Roy Mottahedeh

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, Gurney Professor of History, Emeritus, passed away on July 30, 2024, after a distinguished career of teaching and service at Harvard University.  He was a towering figure as a historian, medievalist, and student of Islamic societies. 

While Roy spent only the first 14 years of his life in New York, where he was born in 1940, he always considered himself “essentially a New Yorker” and Central Park “still the best place for a walk.”  His family background in the Bahá’í faith and his early education in Quaker schools made him particularly sensitive to different approaches to religion in multicultural societies.  Regular weekend visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his parents, renowned collectors of “Oriental” porcelain, enabled him to spend much time in the Near East rooms there. 

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Tributes for Professor Mottahedeh may also be found in the Harvard Crimson and at the Program in Islamic Law at HLS.