Directors

Monique Bernards is a fulltime independent scholar at the Institute for Advanced Arabic and Islamic Studies (Antwerp, Belgium), Secretary of the School of Abbasid Studies and Executive Editor of the Journal of Abbasid Studies. She is a specialist in the intellectual and social history of the early and classical periods of Islam and, more specifically, in the history of the development of Arabic grammatical theories.

Her publications include “Changing Traditions. Al-Mubarrad’s Refutation of Sībawayh and the Subsequent Reception of the Kitāb” (Leiden: Brill 1997), “Grammarians’ Circles of Learning: A Social Network Analysis” (in John Nawas (ed.), Abbasid Studies II, Leuven: Peeters, 2010, 143-164), “Pioneers of Arabic Linguistic Studies” (in Bilal Orfali (ed.), In the Shadow of Arabic, Leiden: Brill 2011, 197-220); and “Ibn Abī Isḥāq (d. ca. 125/743) and His Scholarly Network” (in Petra M. Sijpesteijn and Camilla Adang (eds.), Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G. H. A. Juynboll, Leiden: Brill 2020, 9-31).

Maaike van Berkel is professor of Medieval History at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. She is a specialist in the social and cultural history of the Middle East, with a particular interest in literacy, court culture, bureaucracy and urban studies. Her publications include Crisis and Continuity at the Abbasid Court (with N.M. El Cheikh, H. Kennedy and L. Osti, 2013), Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies (with L. Buskens and P.M. Sijpesteijn, 2017), Prince, Pen and Sword. Eurasian Perspectives (with J. Duindam, 2018) and, “Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbāsid Baghdad” (in Journal of Abbāsid Studies 1, 2014).

Her current research project investigates water management in cities.

John Nawas is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He has written on the religio-political and social history of classical Islam with focus on the caliphate and the ‘ulama. He has been Assistant Editor of the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, and is now one of the five Executive Editors of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition. His publications include “Al-Ma’mun, the Inquisition, and the Quest for Caliphal Authority” (Atlanta, Georgia, USA: Lockwood Press, 2015); “The Appellation Ṣāḥib Sunna in Classical Islam: How Sunnism Came To Be” (in Islamic Law and Society, 23 (2016), 1-22; “A Temporal and Spatial Analysis of Islamic Learning in Early and Classical Islam (in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 50 (2021), 185-223); and “Historical Insights into ‘Mutuality of Being’: Marshall Sahlins’s Kinship Theory in Early and Classical Islam (in Medieval Encounters, 30 (2024), 263-279).

Hugh Kennedy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Professor of Middle Eastern History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). His most recent books are In the Court of the Caliphs (2004), When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam’s Greatest Dynasty (2006) and The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In (2007).

Letizia Osti is Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Milan. She has worked on classical Arabic prose and narrative techniques in biographical collections, historiography, literature, and intersections thereof. She is the author of History and memory in the Abbasid caliphate: writing the past in medieval Arabic literature (Bloomsbury, 2022) and coauthor (with M. Van Berkel, N.M. El Cheikh, and H. Kennedy) of Crisis and Continuity at the Abbasid Court (Brill, 2013). She coedited (with M. Van Berkel) The Historian of Islam at Work (Brill, 2022) and (with M. Cassarino, A. Ghersetti, and S. Pagani), Antologia della letteratura araba (Carocci, 2024).

Shawkat M. Toorawa is Brand Blanshard Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. His interests include classical and medieval Arabic literature, modern Arabic poetry, the literary dimensions of the Qur’an, and the Indian Ocean.

His publications include the co-authored Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (California, 2001); Arabic Literary Culture, 500-925 (ThomsonGale, 2005), co-edited with Michael Cooperson; Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), a study of a ninth-century Baghdad bookman; the edited collection, The Western Indian Ocean: Essays on islands and islanders (HTT, 2007); Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad (NYU Press, 2015), an edition and collaborative translation of Ibn al-Sa‘i’s Nisa’ al-khulafa’; and a translation, The Devotional Qur’an: Beloved Surahs and Verses (Yale UP, 2024). He is a series editor, with Joseph Lowry and Devin Stewart of Resources in Arabic and Islamic Studies, published by Lockwood Press, and an Executive Editor of the Library of Arabic Literature, an initiative to edit and translate significant works from the premodern Arabic literary heritage.

James Weaver is Post-Doc Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His publications include “Al-Naẓẓām (d. ca. 230/845) on the Physics of Sensory Perception,” a chapter from Christian Lange and Adam Bursi (eds.), Islamic Sensory History, Volume 2: 600-1500 which is available open access at https://brill.com/display/title/62333; and “Organizing and Finding Knowledge in the Fourth/Tenth Century,” a Special Issue of the Journal of Abbasid Studies (2020), edited tegether with Letizia Osti (https://brill.com/view/journals/jas/7/2/jas.7.issue-2.xml).