Hadi Matar, 27, was found guilty after a little less than two hours of deliberations following a trial in Chautauqua County Court, New York.
During the shocking attack on August 12 2022, Matar leapty onto the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where Sir Salman was about to speak and stabbed him multiple times in front of a shocked audience.
The attack left the 77-year-old prize-winning novelist blind in one eye, and another man injured.
Sir Salman was the key witness during seven days of testimony, describing in graphic detail his life-threatening injuries and long and painful recovery.
The judge set sentencing for April 23.
Matar could receive up to 25 years in prison.
He was disappointed, according to his public defender, Nathaniel Barone.
'But I thought, quite frankly, that he was well prepared for the verdict, regardless of what it was,' Barone said.
In his comments following the verdict, Schmidt said video evidence helped make the case 'rock solid.'
'We had a number of different angles to show the jurors,' he said. 'It really is as compelling as it can possibly get.'
District lawyer Jason Schmidt played a slow-motion video of the attack for the jury on Friday during his closing argument, pointing out the assailant as he emerged from the audience, walked up a staircase to the stage and broke into a run towards Sir Salman.
'I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack,' Mr Schmidt said.
'I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack. There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted.'
Assistant public defender Andrew Brautigan told the jury that prosecutors have not proved that Matar intended to kill Sir Salman.
The distinction is important for an attempted-murder conviction.
'You will agree something bad happened to Mr Rushdie, but you don't know what Mr Matar's conscious objective was,' Mr Brautigan said.
'The testimony you have heard doesn't establish anything more than a chaotic noisy outburst that occurred that injured Mr Rushdie.'
Matar had with him knives, not a gun or bomb, his lawyers have said previously.
And in response to testimony that the injuries were life-threatening, they have noted that Sir Salman's heart and lungs were uninjured.
Sir Salman was the key witness during testimony that began last week.
The Booker Prize-winning author told jurors he thought he was dying when a masked stranger ran onto the stage and stabbed and slashed at him until being tackled by bystanders.
Sir Salman showed jurors his now-blinded right eye, usually hidden behind a darkened eyeglass lens.
Mr Schmidt reminded jurors about the testimony of a trauma surgeon, who said Sir Salman's injuries would have been fatal without quick treatment.
He also slowed down video showing Matar approaching the seated Sir Salman from behind and reaching around him to stab at his torso with a knife.
Sir Salman raises his arms and rises from his seat, walking and stumbling for a few steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing until they both fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them.
The recordings also picked up the gasps and screams from audience members who had been seated to hear Sir Salman speak with City of Asylum Pittsburgh founder Henry Reese about keeping writers safe.
Mr Reese suffered a gash to his forehead, leading to the assault charge against Matar.
From the witness stand, institution staff and others who were present on the day of the attack pointed to Matar as the assailant.
Stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times in the head, throat, torso, thigh and hand, Sir Salman spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre.
Sir Salman, previously recalled the attack to the jury earlier this month.
He told the court that he initially did not realise he had been stabbed, but quickly realised blood was 'pouring onto my clothes'. Matar, he said 'initially hit me very hard… around here on the lower part of my face my jawline and my neck.'
Sir Salman said he remembers a 'large quantity of blood pouring out onto my clothes' while 'he was hitting me repeatedly.. Stabbing and slashing'.
'Everything happened very quickly so I'm not certain of the exact sequence of events,' he added.
He admitted that he believed he was dying after the near-fatal attack.
Speaking in a croaky voice, Sir Salman told the jury: 'I was aware of this person rushing at me from my right hand side.
'To my right there was a set of half a dozen steps and he must have run up those steps and run across the stage at me.
'I only saw him at the last minute... I was very struck by his eyes, which were dark and seemed very ferocious to me.'
He said: 'It occurred to me quite clearly that I was dying, that was my predominant thought.
'I was lying on the ground in pain… I was aware of a small pile of people to my right essentially subduing the attacker and thanks that I guess I survived.'
'Initially I thought he'd punched me... I thought he was hitting me with his fist.'
He added that he was unable to sit up as he 'also had lost an enormous amount of blood that left me extremely weak.'
Sir Salman's eye 'was initially very badly swollen… that the eyelid couldn't close, so it had to be constantly moisturised', he said.
Doctors at the Pennsylvania hospital he was being treated at decided that it was only when the the swelling round his eye had died that he could undergo surgery.
'I had this, again, quite painful operation to have my eyelid stitched up which I don't recommend', he wryly added.
The elderly writer admitted that he had still not fully recovered from the attack, putting himself at 75 or 80 percent.
He said he was not as 'energetic' or 'strong' as he used to be, and still does not have the full use of his left hand.
Sir Salman said that while he can move it about, he only has feeling in his thumb and index finger.
He had to learn how to walk again and to open a tube of toothpaste with one hand due to injuries to his left hand.
The author detailed his long and painful recovery in his 2024 memoir, 'Knife'.
A separate federal indictment alleges that Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was motivated to attack Rushdie by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the militant group Hezbollah endorsed a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie's death.
Sir Salman has lived with a bounty on his head for over 30 years ever since his novel - The Satanic Verses - sparked an international storm due to its fictionalised account of the prophet Muhammed's life.
The book was seen as blasphemous in the Islamic World and caused widespread protests.
Then in 1989, the then Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against Sir Salman.
A fatwa is an Islamic execution order and it forced the author to go into hiding for a decade.
The outrage was so extreme that people involved in the publication of the best-selling novel were also targeted including Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi who was stabbed to death.
Sir Salman only felt safe enough to be seen in public again in 1998, a decade after the book was published, when Iran lifted the fatwa.
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