Daniel C. Peterson received a bachelor’s degree in Greek and philosophy from Brigham Young University (BYU) and, after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo, earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Peterson is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, where he teaches Arabic language and literature at all levels, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic culture and civilization. He is the editor of the twice-annual FARMS Review, the author of several books and numerous articles–including a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007)—and has lectured across the United States, in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and at various Islamic universities in the Near East and Asia.
He has served in many capacities at what is now known as BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, where he is currently Director of Outreach. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of BYU’s four-part Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, which includes not only the Islamic Translation Series but three sister series: the Medical Works of Moses Maimonides, Eastern Christian Texts, and the Library of the Christian East. These series publish dual-language editions of classical works of medieval Arabic and Persian philosophy, Arabic medicine and science, and early Syriac and Christian Arabic literature.
