Muhsin mahdi biography sample

Muhsin Mahdi, "Smiling Buddha" and Polymath

William Graham

Mahdi came while I was a student, I remember when he arrived.

He came and threw a big party for students who were doing Arabic courses with him in '68, '69, I guess, at his first home out in Bedford. And Mahdi always seemed to draw students to him.

Muhsin mahdi biography sample

I always called him the "smiling Buddha" because he would sit there as a little sort of, somewhat rotund man and he would sit and look inscrutable behind his desk when you were talking with him or asking him about things. And he had this wry smile on his face all the time and then he would ask you a question that just seemed to come completely from left field.

You never had any idea why the question came up, or sometimes even what it was about, but he would probe and get you going on something that didn't seem to be relevant at all, but [that] he took great pleasure in. He also was a polymath.

I mean, he simply knew the Islamic t