Middle Eastern History | Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

skip to content

Current Research

Professor Amira K Bennison
The medieval Islamic West; 18th-19th century Muslim religio-political discourse and state structures especially in the Maghrib; Islamic cultural history

Cities, Ceremonial and Power in the Maghrib

Impact of the Ancient City

Two Berber Empires of the Maghrib: The Almoravids and the Almohads

Two Shores: Islamic Spain and Morocco in the pre-modern era

Political Legitimacy in the Medieval Islamic West

Professor Geoffrey Khan
Semitic philological and linguistic studies, particularly of Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. Also endangered dialects of Neo-Aramaic and the history of Judaeo-Arabic, including modern spoken varieties.

Judaeo-Arabic Mercantile Letters from Ottoman Egypt

Short History of the Structure of Arabic Documents from 1st–5th centuries A.H./7th–12th centuries A.D.

Arabic Documents from Fatimid Nubia

Professor Andrew Marsham
Islamic History; Late Antiquity; Political Culture in Early Islam; Empire and State Formation; Arabic Historiography; Comparative and Transregional History

Political Culture in Three Spheres

Early Islamic Empire: Reframing the Umayyads

Dr Elizabeth Monier
Citizenship and state-building; conceptual and political history; societal cohesion and security; geopolitics; diplomacy and development; religion and international relations.

Re-forming ideas of collective identity: nationhood and inclusion in Arab intellectual debates during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Professor James Montgomery
History of ideas in classical Islam; classical Arabic literature; literary translation.

Al-Jāḥiẓ, Theological Epistles

Al-Ashʿarī, Islamic Theology

Professor Yaron Peleg
Modern Hebrew literary history; Israeli cinema and culture; the creation and legacy of a native Hebrew culture at the beginning of the 20th century

The Zionist Cultural Revolution, 1897-1948