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Ali Reza Sheikholeslami, a noted scholar of Middle Eastern and Iranian history and politics died at his home in Oxford, England, on January 9, 2018. He was 76.
Ali Reza Sheikholeslami was born in Tehran in 1941. After completing his secondary school education in Iran and a two-year course of study for his A-Levels at Bell School in Cambridge, England (1960–62), he attended Columbia University, where he received a BA in political science in 1967. He continued his graduate studies at Northwestern University (MA in political science, 1968) with a focus on religion and politics in Egypt. Subsequently, he pursued his doctoral studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, with a focus on Qajar history. He wrote his dissertation on “The Structure of Central Authority in Iran, 1871–1896” and received his PhD in Islamic studies in 1975.
After obtaining his doctorate, Sheikholeslami served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Washington from 1975 to 1985,...