Bio/Research
I study the intellectual history of Islam, focusing on the evolution of the classical Islamic disciplines and scholarly culture within their broader historical context. My research addresses themes such as orality and literacy, the history of the book, and the theory and practice of Islamic law. ...
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Bio/Research
I study the intellectual history of Islam, focusing on the evolution of the classical Islamic disciplines and scholarly culture within their broader historical context. My research addresses themes such as orality and literacy, the history of the book, and the theory and practice of Islamic law. My first book,The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History, traces the transformation of Islamic law from a primarily oral tradition to a systematic written discipline in the eighth and ninth centuries. I am now at work on my second book, a study of the reinvention of the Islamic scholarly tradition and its textual canon via the printing press in the early twentieth century. My other ongoing research projects investigate the interplay of Islam with other religious and philosophical traditions, for example by exploring the influence of the Greek sage Galen on Islamic thought and the construction of a distinct self-identity among early Muslims. I teach courses on all aspects of classical Islamic thought, and I am an associated faculty member at the Divinity School.
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