Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
About Wilferd Madelung
- Wilferd Ferdinand Madelung (born 26 December 1930) is a German-American author and scholar of Islamic history. Madelung was born in Stuttgart, Germany, where he completed his early education at Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium.
- His family moved to the United States in 1947.
- He studied at Georgetown University.
- In 1952, he went to Egypt and stayed there for a year.
- During his stay, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, initiated by the Free Officers, occurred.
- He also met Ihsan Abbas, the famous scholar of Islamic history. On leaving Egypt he went back to Germany and completed his Ph.D in 1957, working with Berthold Spuler.
- In 1958 he was sent to Iraq by the German government to work at its embassy there.
- Shortly after his arrival in Baghdad, Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the regime in the bloody military coup known as the 14 July Revolution.
- Madelung stayed in Iraq two more years.
- Subsequently, he taught at the University of Chicago. Madelung was Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford from 1978 to 1998.
- He has written extensively on the early history of Islam, as well as on Islamic sects such as the Shi'a and the Ismailis.
- He has also written a lot of academic journals and lectures about Ibadism.
- He has served on the editorial boards of several academic journals including the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies.
- He is currently a senior research fellow at the Institute for Ismaili Studies in London
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