George Saliba is the founding director of the Farouk Jabre Centre for Arabic and Islamic Science and Philosophy and the holder of the Khwarizmi Chair in Arabic and Islamic Science in the Department of History and Archeology at the American University of Beirut. Professor Saliba, who joined AUB after a distinguished career at Columbia University in New York is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking scholarship on the history of Arabic and Islamic science and its central role in the making of the European Renaissance. His prolific body of work—spanning more than 200 articles and several landmark books—has reshaped our understanding of the origins, development, and legacy of scientific traditions in the Islamic world. His publications include : Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, (MIT Press, 2007); A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam (NYU Press, 1995); Rethinking the Roots of Modern Science: Arabic Manuscripts in European Libraries (Occasional Paper, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1999); The Astronomical Work of Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-ʿUrḍī (d. 1266), (Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥda al-ʿArabīya Beirut, 3rd. edn., 2001); and most recently Late Arabic Scientific Commentaries, Their Role and Their Originality: Works of Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī (1550 C.E./956 A.H.) (Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2015).
Professor Saliba's scholarship not only reframes our understanding of Islamic science but also restores agency and complexity to a tradition too often viewed through the lens of decline or dependency. His contributions have earned him wide recognition, including several awards, among which is the History of Astronomy Prize of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science in 1996, appointments as a distinguished senior scholar at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress (2005–2006) and a Carnegie Scholar (2009–2010). He has been twice a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
His recent podcast on the perceived decline of Islamic civilization, recorded in spring 2023, has attracted so far 15.5 million views.