I am a historian of the Islamic, Arabic-speaking Islamic Middle East in its Medieval period (1000-1500 AD), particularly the Mamluk period and its religious culture. I have devoted much of my research to the study of the controversial Ḥanbalī scholar, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. My research explores questions about their memory, the circle of people who followed them, and the early modern reception of their work and thought.
Recently, I have developed an interest in manuscript culture, which I have combined with my Taymiyyan studies and which I would like to apply to other fields of investigation too. In a new project, I am challenging the category of 'Muslim-Christian relations' as an ever-useful analytical one for understanding the diversity and multiplicity of interactions between historical actors of different religious affiliations in the Islamic Mediterranean between the 13th and 16th centuries. I am interested in questions of memory, theory and historical method. With a group of colleagues, I co-direct the journal CROMOHS, Cyber Review of Modern Historiography.
