Rana Mikati

Beirut folks, come if you can

Cover image of the book "Before World Literature" by Matthew L. Keegan.

My first monograph "Before World Literature" will be released by the University of Pennsylvania Press in March 2026. I hope it will be of interest to folks in comparative literature, Islamic studies, and classical Arabic literature.
www.pennpress.org/978151282887...

This is both lovely and important.

Please boost! The NOEL PRIZE, in memory of the great and good and much-missed Will Noel.

Celebrate your (or any) open access library project. No project too small, or too big. Full details here, deadline 8/1, extremely low-effort Google Form: pacscl.org/what-we-do/f...

Samsi, “Queen of the Arabs”, and Her Fight Against Assyria - The Ancient Near East Today The women referred to in Assyrian inscriptions as “Queen of the Arabs” have been a passing footnote in Neo-Assyrian history — until now. Here is the story of one of them.

Ancient Assyrian kings didn’t just go to war with other kings.

They battled queens of the Arabian peninsula, including the formidable Queen Samsi who may even be depicted on a lost stone relief mid-battle on the back of a camel. Fascinating piece by Ellie Bennet anetoday.org/samsi-queen-...

Meant to say at noon at Princeton

Today at noon at noon. Garrett Davidson and I are presenting on our ongoing al-Khanji book.

Join us this coming Monday at #IAIS to discuss Vernon Schubel’s new work with him - the registration link is here: eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Indeed husbands are keepers of the speed limit

Drove there with a fellow Islamic archaeologist friend … we were stopped for speeding and told to bring our husbands next time.

Dug through my old files and all I could find is the Stephen Urice report (Qasr Kharana in the Transjordan) from 1987!

You’ve saved me 200$

Yep.

I believe he commissioned the Persian calligrapher Mohamad ‘Ali Sanglak for this and for the Bulaq Press

"اقليم الشام … ديار النبيين ومركز الصالحين ومعدن البدلاء ومطلب الفضلاء به القبلة الاولى وموضع الحشر والمسرى والارض المقدسة والرباطات الفاضلة والثغور الجليلة والجبال الشريفة."
المقدسي، احسن التقاسيم في معرفة الاقاليم.

I deleted one today…

Please share:
Call for Applications
Winter School: Reading and Analysing Ottoman Manuscript Sources
March 17-25, 2025, Rethymno (Greece), IMS/FORTH
www.ims.forth.gr/en/news-item...

A Window into Early Twentieth-Century Arabic Manuscripts Transactions On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, a team of librarians from the American University in Cairo (AUC) arrived at the al-Khanji Bookstore in downtown Cairo to oversee the transfer of a rare archive document...

www.ias.edu/ideas/window...

A write-up by Garrett Davidson, Sabine Schmidtke and myself explaining how the project we are working on came about. Might be of interest to Islamic manuscripts people.

This is amazing. A Lithuanian researcher, Ernesta Kazakėnaitė, has identified the earliest surviving manuscript in a Sámi language: ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/je...

Fellow historians , #warfare folks - whether #lateantique or #medieval- are there out there articles/books that deal with the different values and characteristics attributed to various weapons (sword/javelin, etc)

He is considering it

Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca on Steam Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca is a unique free-to-play 2D RPG which is designed as an educational tool to help players and students to engage with the cultural history of the seventeenth-century Ottoman...

Here is the link for the free demo as well
store.steampowered.com/app/3306180/...

#gamingthepast #historygames #ottoman #digtialhumanities

Nice. Maybe I can use it for the Islamic Civ class I am teaching this Spring

Turkey and Pakistan and Indonesia had female heads of government since 90s, that is three decades—and counting—before the US.

“Magical” finds in manuscripts in the Garrett collection at the Firestone library.

www.aucegypt.edu/news/auc-lib...
Colleagues at AUC, IAS, NYU, Princeton, Umich, and cofc came together to make this happen. Proud of their work and of my husband Garrett Davidson who made it happen.

A fragment of a manuscript on the benefits of Ramaḍān.

A fragment of a manuscript on the benefits of Ramaḍān (مكتوب في فضائل شهر رمضان), in the collection of Aboubacar Ben Said Library, Timbuktu, Mali. (SAV ABS 02832: vhmml.org/readingRoom/view/153971)

Thank you

My book on early Islamic Beirut is out

brill.com/display/titl...