Harvard Islamica Podcast

The Alwaleed Program team speaks with András Riedlmayer, former Aga Khan Bibliographer of Islamic Art and Architecture at Harvard's Fine Arts Library, about his career as a librarian, the development of the field of the history of Islamic art and architecture, and how his passion for cultural heritage preservation took him from working in Harvard's libraries to conducting field research in the war-torn streets of Kosovo and Bosnia and testifying as an expert witness for the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), even being interrogated by the former Serbian President, Slobodan Milošević, himself.András Riedlmayer, scholar of Ottoman studies, writer, and editor, served as the Aga Khan Bibliographer of Islamic Art and Architecture at Harvard's Fine Arts Library from 1985 until his retirement in 2020. In that time, András built up the Fine Arts Library's collection, which has become North America's largest collection of materials on the art and architecture of the Islamic world. He has served as an invaluable resource for Islamic studies researchers at Harvard and beyond and a collaborator in the production of Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual cultures of the Islamic World, published by the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Art and Architecture at Harvard. In addition to his work at Harvard, András distinguished himself as a cultural heritage historian on the Ottoman-era Balkans, documenting the destruction of cultural monuments, libraries, and archives in the wars and ethnic cleansing that took place in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. In 2018, the Middle East Librarians Association granted András the David H. Partington award for his “contributions to the field of Middle East librarianship, librarianship in general, and the world of scholarship.”Credits, transcript, and resources: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-11-preserving-islamicate-cultural-heritage

In this episode, we discuss the new edited volume, Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts, with its editor, Professor Ousmane Kane, and his colleague, Dr. Ebrima Sall, who wrote the conclusion. This volume is the product of two conferences convened at Harvard by Professor Kane in 2017 on "Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa" and "New Directions in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa" that brought together scholars of diverse disciplines from around the world to explore the understudied tradition of Arabo-Islamic scholarship in Africa. Professor Kane and Dr. Sall talk about what led them to want to bridge the divides between different knowledge traditions and comment on the contributions of 19 scholars to this volume on themes that include Islamic scholarly networks, textuality and orality in Islamic scholarship, the transformation of Islamic education in Africa, and the role of 'Ajami and Sufism in the transmission of Islamic knowledge in the region. Ousmane Kane is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Professor of Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.Ebrima Sall is the executive director of Trust Africa and former executive secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-10-islamic-scholarship-africa-ousmane-kane-and-ebrima-sall

The Alwaleed Program team speaks with Dr. Rushain Abbasi, winner of the 2021 Alwaleed bin Talal Prize for Best Dissertation in Islamic Studies for his dissertation entitled, "Beyond the Realm of Religion: The Idea of the Secular in Premodern Islam." In this study, Rushain challenges the prevailing view that maintains that premodern Muslims did not distinguish between the religious and the secular and that this distinction only emerged with the invention of these categories in the modern, post-Enlightenment West. His longue durée study demonstrates how numerous Muslim thinkers from the medieval to early modern period (1000-1750) regularly differentiated between the religious and the secular in subjects ranging from politics to prophethood. Furthermore, Rushain constructs a radically different conception of secularity that, far from being opposed to the religious, was based on a desire to bring religion to its best and fullest expression.Rushain Abbasi recently completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. In 2021-22, he is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Twitter: @AbbasiRushainCredits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-9-beyond-realm-religion-idea-secular-premodern-islam-dr-rushain-abbasi

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic raised questions about how the health crisis, government-imposed lockdowns, and economic recession would affect religious faith and behavior. While many social scientists expected it to strengthen religiosity as people turned to their faith for comfort in a time of need, others suspected a religious recession could result from the limitations on communal religious activity. In this episode, we speak with three political scientists, Tarek Masoud, A. Kadir Yildirim, and Peter Mandaville, about their new study of religious behavior following the pandemic in the Muslim-majority countries of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia in November and December of 2020.Tarek Masoud is Faculty Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University, Professor of Public Policy, and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.A. Kadir Yildirim is Fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Twitter: @akyildirimPeter Mandaville is Professor of International Affairs at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. Twitter: @pmandavilleCredits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-8-pandemic-religious-behavior-muslim-world-tarek-masoud-kadir-yildirim-and-peter

In spring 2021, Hassaan Shahawy (A.B. '16, J.D. '22) was elected the 135th president of the Harvard Law Review, making him the first Muslim and first expert in Islamic law in the position. In the first half of our conversation, Hassaan talks about his background in Islamic law and how it contributes to his studies at Harvard Law School and work at the Harvard Law Review. He also shares his interests in broader social issues such as criminal justice reform and refugee issues. In the second half, we discuss Hassaan's Ph.D. dissertation entitled, "How Subjectivity Became Wrong: Early Hanafism and the Scandal of Istiḥsān in the Formative Period of Islamic Law (750-1000 CE)." Hassaan talks about how his interest in modern Islamic legal debates led him to research how early Muslim jurists dealt with political, economic, and social change; specifically, the use of istiḥsān, juristic preference (literally, “to seek what is good”), in the Hanafi school of law and the subsequent controversy around the use of subjectivity to depart from more conventional legal reasoning.Hassaan Shahawy is a second-year law student at Harvard Law School and president of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from Harvard College in 2016, where he studied history and Near Eastern studies, and went on to study at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned his master's and Ph.D. in Islamic law.Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-7-seeking-what-good-dr-hassaan-shahawy

Professor Ali Asani tells the Alwaleed Program team about his scholarly trajectory, beginning with his experiences coming to Harvard College as an international student from Kenya and entering Islamic studies as an Ismaili student in the early 1970s. He also discusses the importance of expanding perspectives in Islamic studies to include different interpretations of Islam, his interest in studying Islam as a living tradition in the lives of ordinary believers, especially through the arts, and his commitment to education beyond the walls of the university. Given Professor Asani's interest in the experience of Islam through the sound arts, this episode contains selections from Qur'anic recitation, qawwali, and the ginans, the devotional hymns of South Asia's Nizari Ismaili communities.Ali Asani is Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures. He is also former director of the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University.Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-6-giving-voice-to-silenced-islams-ali-asani

Professor William Graham talks about his scholarly journey and how he "stumbled" into Islamic studies after pursuing other subjects including Classics and Sanskrit and Indian studies. He also shares his memories of his advisors at Harvard, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Muhsin Mahdi, and other scholars who shaped Islamic studies including Josef van Ess, Abdelhamid Sabra, Harry Wolfson, Annemarie Schimmel, and George Makdisi. Finally, Professor Graham reflects on his involvement across the different homes of Islamic studies at Harvard including Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Study of Religion, and Harvard Divinity School as well as his scholarly interest in the Qur'an as an oral scripture.William A. Graham is Murray A. Albertson Research Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Emeritus, in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus. During his 45 years of teaching at Harvard he served as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on the Study of Religion, and the Core Curriculum Committee on Foreign Cultures; dean of the Harvard Divinity School; and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program.Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-5-establishing-islamic-and-comparative-religious-studies-prof-william-graham

In this collaboration between the Harvard Islamica Podcast and the Ottoman History Podcast (OHP), we discuss OHP's new series called "The Making of the Islamic World," using podcasts in the classroom, and engaging in public-facing history in the changing landscape of scholarship in the humanities. Chris Gratien, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia and producer and co-creator of OHP, shares his experiences as a long-time producer of public-facing scholarship through OHP and how he created and used the 10-part, multi-vocal series on "The Making of the Islamic World" to expose his students to diverse methods and perspectives on a millennium of Islamic history in his remote teaching amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor of History at Boston College, talks about her course on Ottoman history, "Podcasting the Ottomans," and the importance of scholars adapting to the new realities of how the internet is changing the academic profession.Chris Gratien is Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region of the former Ottoman Empire from the 1850s until the 1950s.Dana Sajdi is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History at Boston College. In addition to authoring The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the 18th Century Levant, she is editor of Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century (I.B. Tauris, 2008; in Turkish, Koc University Press, 2014).Links: "The Making of the Islamic World" Series: www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/p/the-maki…world.html "Podcasting the Ottomans" Course at Boston College: mediakron.bc.edu/ottomans "Podcasting the Ottomans" Interview: www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/04/po…omans.html Twitter: @OttomanHistory and @HarvardIslamicCredits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-4-podcas…-dana-sajdi

Professor Roy Mottahedeh shares with the Alwaleed Program team how he entered the field of Islamic studies as an undergraduate at Harvard in the late 1950s and his development and career as a historian. Originally interested in studying Persian after growing up hearing the language from his father, Professor Mottahedeh pursued the study of both Persian and Arabic at Harvard and, inspired by Sir Hamilton Gibb, chose to pursue a career in Islamic history. Professor Mottahedeh shares his memories of studying Arabic, Persian, and other languages; traveling in the Middle East and Central Asia after college, studying with Sir Hamilton Gibb, Richard Frye, Annemarie Schimmel, and others; and the state of Islamic studies when he returned to Harvard as a professor in 1986. He also answers our questions about some of his best-known works, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (1980), The Mantle of the Prophet (1985), Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence (2005), and “The Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicist's Critique” (1993).Roy Mottahedeh is Gurney Research Professor of History, the former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the founding director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University.Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-3-making-islamic-historian-prof-roy-mottahedeh

In this first episode in a four-part series, former Alwaleed Program directors, Professors Roy Mottahedeh, William Graham, and Ali Asani, share reflections on the development of Islamic studies over the course of their careers, first as students and then as faculty at Harvard. Professor Graham discusses the development of Islamic studies within religious studies in the 20th century, the importance of a comparative approach, and the legacy of Orientalism. He and Professor Mottahedeh also speak about the study of Islam within post-World War II area studies and Professor Mottahedeh comments on Islamic studies within the social sciences, including his field of history. Professor Asani, whose interests are primarily in Islam outside the Middle East and especially in South Asia, discusses his passion for the global study of Islam and studying it through literature and the arts. While they have worked with many great scholars, the professors highlight some of their most influential mentors including Sir Hamilton Gibb, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Annemarie Schimmel. We also discuss the institutional place of Islamic studies at Harvard, including in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Divinity School, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the broader university curriculum, and the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program. Finally, Professors Mottahedeh, Graham, and Asani share their hopes for the future of Islamic studies at Harvard. In the next three episodes, we will hear more from each of them about their scholarly journeys.Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/ep-2-profes…d-ali-asani

The Alwaleed Program team speaks with Dr. Mary Elston, winner of the 2020 Alwaleed Bin Talal Prize for Best Dissertation in Islamic Studies, about her dissertation entitled, "Reviving Turāth: Islamic Education in Modern Egypt." Mary shares her findings about the history of reform at al-Azhar since the 19th century and the contemporary movement to revive “turāth,” or Islamic heritage, through the eyes of Muslim scholars, their students, and the Egyptian state. We also discuss how Mary's combined methodological approach of historical textual analysis and ethnography allowed her to capture the complex lived reality of the Islamic tradition in Egypt today and contribute to the broadening, interdisciplinary nature of Islamic studies.Dr. Mary Elston recently completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. In 2020-21, she is a visiting fellow at the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School and at the Center for Middle East Studies at Harvard University.Credits and transcript: islamicstudies.harvard.edu/reviving-tu…odern-egypt