OBITUARY DR. SYED HUSAIN MOHAMMAD JAFRI

Abstract

With the death of Dr. Syed Husain Mohammad Jafri on January 20, 2019 in Karachi at the age of 84, Pakistan has lost a scholar of international repute. There are not many historians in Pakistan who obtained two doctoral degrees in history. His first Ph.D. was from the University of Lucknow (India), and the other from the University of London. He Joined Pakistan Study Centre, University of Karachi, as a founding director in 1983, from where he retired in 1998. He was the first Co-editor of the Hamdard Islamicus. He remained till his last moments, a distinguished member of the Advisory Board of the Hamdard Islamicus. Prof. Dr. Jafri was a trend setter in the field of the sectarian history of Islam. He started his career as a teacher at the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur) in 1962. He also served the American University of Beirut as the Shaykh Zayed Chair of Islamic Studies and the Australian National University, (Canberra). Subsequently he joined the Aga Khan University, Karachi as a full professor, where he held for a decade, the founding Chair of Islamic and Pakistan Studies.