Tarif Khalidi
Palestinian historian
Tarif Khalidi (Arabic: طريف الخالدي; born 24 January 1938) is a Palestinian historian who now holds the Shaykh Zayid Chair in Islamic and Arabic Studies at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
Family
Khalidi is the son of Ahmad Samih Khalidi (1896–1951) and Anbara Salam (1897–1986), brother of Usama al-Khalidi and half-brother of Walid Khalidi. His sister is Randa al-Fattal, a Palestinian-Syrian author, playwright and political activist. Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi is Tarif's first cousin.
Khalidi's son, Muhammad Ali Khalidi, is a philosophy professor at York University. His daughter, Aliya Khalidi, is a lecturer at the Lebanese American University. The Khalidi family has lived in Jerusalem since the eleventh century and is noted for a long line of judges and scholars. Tarif's father was principal of the Government Arab College in Jerusalem from 1925 until 1948. He also served as Deputy Director of Education under the British Mandate. He was the author of several works on educational theory and on Palestinian history.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tarif Khalidi” is palestinian historian. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tarif, Khalidi and Palestinian, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “palestinian historian” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3981133. VIAF identifies the subject as 109133368. The Library of Congress control number is n84129383. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1896, 1951 and 1897.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Tarif Khalidi”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Tarif Khalidi primary sources, Tarif Khalidi archive and Tarif research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tarif Khalidi”?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Tarif Khalidi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.