Foreign thinker
Josef van Ess
Josef van EssIslamic Studies and Islamic TheologyGerman
Life and Thought
Josef van Ess (1934–2021) was a German Islamicist and one of the most eminent scholars of the history of Islamic theology in its formative period. His six-volume work *Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra* (Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra) is considered the most comprehensive study of early Islamic religious thought. He was for many years Professor of Islamic Studies and Semitic Languages at the University of Tübingen.
