Raghib al-Sirjani Biography

Dr. Raghib al-Sirjani — also transliterated Ragheb Elsergany — is an Egyptian Islamic historian, surgeon, and the founder of Islam Story, the most widely visited Arabic-language website dedicated to Islamic history. Born in al-Mansoura in 1384 AH / 1964 CE, he completed an unusual dual career path: a medical degree from Cairo University followed by a master's and PhD in urology, alongside a parallel formal Islamic education that culminated in a master's and PhD in Islamic history from the same institution. He practiced surgery for several years before turning to full-time scholarship and public history.

Al-Sirjani founded Qissat al-Islam (islamstory.com) in 2007, building it into a major repository of articles, lectures, courses, and animated documentaries on every major period of Islamic history — early Islam, the Rashidun, the Umayyad and Abbasid eras, al-Andalus, the Crusades, the Ottoman empire, modern Muslim states. He has authored more than fifty books in Arabic, many translated into English, including The Bright Pages from the History of Islamic Medicine, How the Muslims Brought Down the Tatars, Mawsu'at al-Tarikh al-Islami ('Encyclopedia of Islamic History'), and Maharat al-Hayah ('Life Skills'). His written and video output places particular emphasis on civilizational history and Muslim contributions to science, medicine, and governance.

Al-Sirjani's combination of accessible language, copious illustrative examples, and deliberate counter-narrative to orientalist historiography has given him a wide readership across the Arab world and the Muslim diaspora. He is currently based in Egypt and continues to lecture, publish, and produce Islamic history content across television, video, and online platforms.