Mubashir AK

How the Tiger Became an Indian National Symbol The big cat represented courage for Rajput rulers, while the Mughal emperors saw hunting it as mastering nature and the British used it to assert imperial control

“For Mughal emperors like Akbar and Jahangir, a tiger slain in the forest showed their dominance over nature and, more broadly, their imperial authority.” 

Ottomans and the Supernatural: Nature and the Limits of Knowledge in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire Abstract. Man is part of nature, we say, and perhaps for most of us nature includes all that exists (at least in a tangible way—i.e. if we want to exclude

My latest book, on open access!

Ottomans and the Supernatural: Nature and the Limits of Knowledge in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire url: academic.oup.com/book/61617

How the New York Times Failed Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya On October 29, 2023, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and neonatologist based at Kamal Adwan hospital in the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Lahiya, published an op-ed in the New York Times. …

Max Weiss on Translating the Gaza Doctor’s Words for the Times, and the Paper’s Failure to Cover His Abduction and Torture

lithub.com/how-the-new-...

Islamic Intellectual History in the Mughal World Cambridge Core - South Asian History - Islamic Intellectual History in the Mughal World

Absolutely cannot wait to see this come out next month. The editors - Asad Ahmed and his students at Berkeley - are doing groundbreaking work on the intellectual history of the Timurid/Mughal period...

resolve.cambridge.org/core/books/i...

“A Blind Understanding:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:33 No one has peeked behind the veil of fate. / No one’s discovered destiny’s secret

“A Blind Understanding:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:33

my book, _Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty: Genres of Tradition in Muslim South Asia_, will be published by @undpress.bsky.social in June 2026

i'm going through the proofs, and don't see any typos in the epilogue, so sharing this 3-page essay here

undpress.nd.edu/978026821090...

Books Left Behind: The Library of a Cairene Scholar at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century (Gotha Manuscript Talks) Dr Feras Krimsti (Gotha Research Library) and Professor Konrad Hirschler (University of Hamburg) welcome Professor Adam Sabra (University of California, Santa Barbara) to the Gotha Manuscript Talks th...

🗓️ "The Library of a Cairene Scholar at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century" ▶️ Dr Feras Krimsti and Professor Konrad Hirschler welcome Professor Adam Sabra (University of California, Santa Barbara) to the #GothaManuscriptTalks this time. www.uni-erfurt.de/en/universit...

The capture or rather kidnapping of Maduro is a blatant violation of the Constitution, international law and simple decency. The crudest imperialism: for no aim but the assertion of Presidential power.

Our editors reflect on 2025 as a “year of amnesia,” curating @newlinesmag.bsky.social
stories that revisit the wars, political shocks and humanitarian crises the world quickly moved past — and insisting they be remembered rather than buried by the next headline.

mailchi.mp/newlinesmag/...

DISSEMINATING AL-ANDALUS

Check out "Al-Andalus y la Historia", an online free journal with the voices of experts such as J. Albarrán, B. Catlos, A. García-Sanjuán, E. Cardoso, S. Kimmel, J. Bellver, G. Wiegers and much more

New English section thanks to Ann Christys.

www.alandalusylahistoria.com

Samy Ayoub

Jotwell Legal History latest:
Samy Ayoub, The Indispensable Nature of Islamic Legal Theory (reviewing Omar Farahat, Generality and Exception in Islamic Legal Theory: Intent, Language, and the Jurist’s Role, 20 Am. J. Compar. L. 1 (2024)), legalhist.jotwell.com/the-indispen....

Hi pls add me.

Lanzillo is keen to see labor history as a site for Islamic history. Pious Labor does so admirably through both method and content. As Lanzillo rightly underscores, the history of Islam in colonial India has largely been written through “an insistence on the primacy of canonical thinkers and texts” (17). Pious Labor elegantly portrays how artisans anchored their labor in Islamic pasts. Woodworkers traced their skills to the prophet Nuh (Noah); tailors to Idris (Enoch); blacksmiths to Dawud (David). Artisans often connected their trade and/or skill to Sufi pirs (guides/saints), as was the case with scribes and metalsmiths. By showing us an “artisanal Islam” in a range of contexts, the book effectively makes working- and lower-class histories integral to an understanding of Islam in South Asia. Pious Labor is refreshingly original in bringing histories of economy, labor, technology, and Islam into dialogue with one another, and it makes contributions to each of these fields of history. Additionally, by highlighting how Muslim artisans emphasized the Islamic origins of their trades and the pious nature of their labor and rendered new technologies as sources for their accumulation of social and cultural capital, Lanzillo makes a valuable contribution to the history of late colonial India.

Pious Labor (@ucpress.bsky.social ) reviewed in the AHR by @farinamir.bsky.social . I've been fortunate that the book has been read by several thoughtful and generous reviewers, and I'm especially thrilled to see this one.

academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...
🗃️

Volume 45 Issue 3 | Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East | Duke University Press

I am especially proud of the Dec 2025 issue of *CSSAAME* @dukepress.bsky.social with the special issue "Technologies of War* (edited by Madiha Tahir and Adrien Zakar) and the Kitabkhana on Hafsa Kanjwal's *Colonizing Kashmiri* (2024) <--free to read!

Photo of paragraph from Vikram Seth’s Two Lives

Lovely anecdote from Vikram Seth’s Two Lives where he discusses his German Jewish aunt crying after being served Marmite at the home of the famous Islamic studies scholar AJ Arberry where she worked after fleeing Berlin in 1939. #Marmite #Britishdelicacies

‘The Course of Empire’ Reimagined in Middle Eastern Graffiti Across the region, street artists are claiming space and painting themselves back into the landscape

NEW: Across the Middle East, graffiti artists are claiming space and painting themselves back into the landscape, writes Ibrahim Absar for @newlinesmag.bsky.social
newlinesmag.com/essays/the-c...

“You will not Kill our Imagination:” Palestinian Memoirist Saeed Teebi Teebi’s efforts to come to terms with the failures and powers of language to narrate a Palestinian story that can stand for itself

“You will not Kill our Imagination:” Palestinian Memoirist Saeed Teebi

Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam, By Adam Bursi The past two decades have seen an extraordinary efflorescence of scholarship on the history of relics in Islam and the practices associated with them. Rele

Grateful for these kind and thoughtful recent reviews of my book from Finbarr Barry Flood and Usman Hamid in the Journal of Islamic Studies and in Medieval Encounters.

doi.org/10.1093/jis/...

brill.com/view/journal...

“Another Cup to Drown the Memory:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:30 Since my advent here on that first day wasn't up to me, but my unwilling departure has been firmly decreed...

“Another Cup to Drown the Memory:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:30

Thanks for sharing

Just finished reading this article! It offers a highly illuminating historical analysis of the polarization between Islamists and leftists in Egypt. A must-read for those working on polarization in Egypt!

Western elites fear a 'globalised intifada' because they are its targets, not Jews While western publics are being demonised as racists, the technology and strategies used today against Palestinians will become the walls of tomorrow’s prisons for us all

Western elites fear a 'globalised intifada' because they are its targets, not Jews
open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

One of my favorite books/stories in MENA studies is about the encounter of Americans with large numbers of Eastern Christians for the first time, and their amazement that the latter had lots of interest in Western culture, philosophy, etc. but close to zero interest in conversion

The Unruly History That Weighs on the New Syria To understand the challenges the country faces today, it's helpful to look back at three previous ‘beginnings’ in the 20th century

“The situation today remains volatile, with no guarantees that Syria will survive.”

Yassin al-Haj Saleh looks back at the 20th century and the unruly history weighing on the “new” Syria, for @newlinesmag.bsky.social

Leader of anti-Hamas militia armed by Israel killed in Gaza, sources say | CNN The leader of an anti-Hamas group that was armed and backed by Israel has been killed in Gaza, three Israeli sources told CNN, in a potential blow to Israel’s post-war plans in the shattered territory...

edition.cnn.com/2025/12/04/m...

Al-Atlal, Now: On Language and Silence in Gaza’s Wake It felt like failing—all of it. First the words, then their end. For twenty-four months you pushed your way to language, let language push through you—a desecration of articulation. Committing, cas…

qifa nabki lithub.com/al-atlal-now... ended one course today with her earlier essay on the work of the witness... what does it mean to not try to leave unscathed

The turkey's journey from the Atlantic to the early modern Islamic world | Folger Shakespeare Library Folger Shakespeare Library is the world's largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world. Shakespeare belongs to you. His world is vast. Come explore. Jo...

My annual traveling turkeys post! What do you do when a New World bird visits the Mughal court? Paint it in miniature, of course! This essay by Neha Vermani follows the Muslim reception of our feathered friends.
www.folger.edu/blogs/shakes...

Indonesia races to evacuate stranded residents as flood death toll hits 61 Rescuers on Indonesia's flood- and landslide-hit Sumatra island rushed on Thursday to pull stranded residents out of fast-flowing muddy waters that smashed through homes and forced thousands of people...

I’ll be right back there in 3-4 weeks. Devastating floods and landslides. The increasing major storm events are from climate change. www.reuters.com/business/env...