Assef Ashraf is a historian of Iran and the Persianate world.
Much of his current research centres on questions of imperial formation and governance. His book Making and Remaking Empire in Early Qajar Iran (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press) focuses on the formation of Qajar Iran and on the governance practices which over time, constructed, consolidated, and ultimately exposed the limits of Qajar political authority. Rather than narrating a potted political history or explaining state formation through the lens of institutions and capacity building, the book explores the connections, networks, and practices that kept a political order in place.
Aspects of his research have been published in Comparative Studies in Society and History, the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. He has also co-edited a volume of essays entitled The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere (Brill, 2019) and serves on the Editorial Board of a new series dedicated to publishing critical editions of primary source texts related to Persianate world history.
Dr Ashraf received his PhD from the Department of History at Yale University in 2017 and began teaching at Cambridge in 2018. He lectures and supervises in a variety of papers on the history and culture of Iran, the Middle East, and the Persian-speaking world.
Dr Ashraf will be on sabbatical leave during the 2022-23 academical year. He will resume taking on new PhD and MPhil students in 2023-24.
Dr Ashraf welcomes inquiries from prospective MPhil and PhD students who are interested in projects relating to the history of Iran and the Persian-speaking world, from the early modern to modern periods broadly defined.
Comparative empires; the ‘Persianate world’; imperial and state formation; political culture; Persian historiography; history, memory, and the politics of knowledge.
Current PhD students
| Saleh Alkhulaifi: The modern history of the Gulf and the emergence of Gulf states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. |
| Yusuf Chaudhary: Islamic Intellectual History in the Mongol Ilkhanate (1258-1358); Theological Works of Rashid al-Din al-Hamadhani; Ilkhanid Intellectual Networks |
| Iqan Shahidi: The concept of decline and decadence in the writings of the contemporary intellectuals of Iran. |
