#  Baber Johansen 

Professor of Islamic Studies Emeritus

 

 

 



   ![Baber Johansen](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/hds2/files/johansenbaber_081308_035.jpg?itok=rtT9CLDV) 

 



 





 

*The Harvard Divinity School community is mourning the death of Baber Johansen, Professor of Islamic Studies Emeritus, who died in late January 2026.* [*Read a reflection*](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2026/03/23/remembering-baber-johansen-renowned-scholar-islamic-law-harvard-divinity-school) *on his life and legacy.*

## Education

- PhD, Habilitation in Islamic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

## Profile

Baber Johansen was appointed Professor of Islamic Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School in 2005. He became Harvard Divinity School Research Professor of Islamic Studies in 2020, and Professor of Islamic Studies Emeritus in 2025.

Before coming to HDS, Johansen served as Directeur d'études at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Centre d'étude des normes juridiques), Paris (1995-2005), and Professor for Islamic Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin (1972-1995). In 2006 he was appointed an affiliated professor at Harvard Law School and acting director of its Islamic Legal Studies Program for 2006 to 2010. In 2007 he was affiliated with the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and from July 2010 to June 2013, he was the director of the [Center for Middle Eastern Studies](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/). He was also a faculty associate of Harvard's [Weatherhead Center for International Affairs](https://wcfia.harvard.edu/) and a member of its Executive Committee.

His research and teaching focused on the relationship between religion and law in the classical and the modern Muslim world. His book *Muhammad Husain Haikal Europa und der Orient im Weltbild eines ägyptischen Liberalen* (1967), translated into Arabic in Abu Dhabi in 2010, examines twentieth-century liberal interpretations of Islam; *Islam und Staat* (1982) looks at modern Muslim debates on state models; and *Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent* (1988) considers long-term changes in classical and postclassical legal doctrine. *Contingency in a Sacred Law: Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim* Fiqh (1999) focuses on law, social practice, and ethics in Islam.

Johansen was invited to the University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice to teach for a month (April-May 1996) as a visiting professor. He was invited by the *Institut du Monde Arabe* (The Arab World Institute, Paris) for a series of lectures in 1995 for *La Chaire de l’IMA*. He was an Individual Resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in July 1999. He was invited by Harvard University as an H.A.R. Gibbs Scholar in April 1998 and delivered three lectures.

Johansen was twice elected a member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and had been a visiting professor at the Watson Institute (Providence) and Harvard University. He was one of the three executive editors of *Islamic Law and Society*, and served as area editor for Islamic Law in the *Oxford Encyclopedia of Legal History* (2009) and as adviser for the *Encyclopedia of Law and Society* (Sage, 2009).

## Selected publications

- [*Contingency in a Sacred Law: Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim* Fiqh](https://brill.com/display/title/149?rskey=nqeJQ0&result=19) (Brill Academic Publishers, 1999)
- [*The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent. The Peasants’ Loss of Property Rights as Interpreted in the Hanafite Legal Literature of the Mamluk and Ottoman Periods*](https://www.routledge.com/The-Islamic-Law-on-Land-Tax-and-Rent-The-Peasants-Loss-of-Property-Rights/Johansen/p/book/9781315312613) (New York, Routledge Library Editions: Islam, State and Society, 2017; first published by Croom Helm LTD, 1988)

## See also

- [Center for Middle Eastern Studies profile page](https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/people/baber-johansen)

## Support

To reach Harvard Divinity School's faculty coordinators, email [div-faculty\_coordinators@calists.harvard.edu](mailto:div-faculty_coordinators@calists.harvard.edu).

For media inquiries or requests, please [contact Tyler Sprouse](mailto:tsprouse@hds.harvard.edu) in the Office of Communications.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Affiliation
    
     [Faculty](/affiliation/faculty)
- ## Alpha Grouping
    
     [F-J](/alpha-grouping/f-j)
- ## Faculty Type
    
     [Research Professors and Emeriti](/faculty-type/research-professors-and-emeriti)