Hadi Fakhoury (PhD McGill, 2021) is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. He is editor of a forthcoming book, New Perspectives on Henry Corbin (Palgrave, in press).

As an affiliated researcher at the Orient-Institut Beirut from April to October 2025, Fakhoury will complete a monograph titled The Way to Sophia: Henry Corbin in Istanbul (1939–1945). This work unveils a pivotal yet unexamined chapter in the life of Henry Corbin (1903–1978), a French philosopher and scholar whose contributions significantly shaped the understanding of Islamic philosophy, mysticism, and comparative religion. Drawing on over a decade of research and a wealth of unpublished materials, Fakhoury demonstrates that Corbin’s six-year sojourn in Istanbul during World War II was more than a mere biographical footnote—it was the crucible in which his distinctive philosophical and spiritual outlook was forged. Combining narrative history, textual analysis, and intellectual biography, the book elucidates how this understudied period served as a vital link between Corbin’s early and later works, representing a crucial missing piece in what he famously described as his transition “from Heidegger to Suhrawardi.” By  centering on Corbin’s “lost years,” this study not only reshapes  our understanding of Corbin himself but also enables a reassessment of 20^th-century religious thought and its enduring legacy. Ultimately, the book reveals how wartime exile catalyzed one of the most distinctive voices in modern Islamic studies, and it illuminates Corbin’s lifelong quest to reconcile the intellectual traditions of East and West.