Notes on Contributors
Monica Balda-Tillier
is Associate Professor of Arabic Language at LUHCIE, Université Grenoble â Alpes. She works on courtly love, theory of profane works and post-classical Arabic literature. More recently, she is also dealing with emotions and autobiography in Medieval Arabic literature.
Francesca Bellino
is Associate Professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Naples LâOrientale. Her main research interests are adab literature, encyclopaedism and popular literature. She has published on a variety of topics including articles concerning encyclopaedical works from the Abbasid (Ibn Qutayba), Mamluk (al-QazwÄ«nÄ«, Ibn al-WardÄ«, Ibn Faá¸l AllÄh al-Ê¿UmarÄ«) and Ottoman (ṬÄÅ¡koÌpruÌzÄda) periods. As regards the latter, she wrote âArabic Encyclopaedias and Encyclopaedism in the Ottoman Period: Forms, Functions and Intersections between Adab and Modernityâ (Adab and Modernity: a âCivilising Processâ?, 2019). She is editor-in-chief of Oriente Moderno.
Elisabetta Benigni
(PhD Sapienza University) is Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Turin. She works on translations and intellectual history in the early modern and modern Mediterranean. Her recent publications include: âRenaissances at Borders of Literary Modernity: Translations and Language Debates between the Nahá¸ah and the Risorgimentoâ (Oriente Moderno 2019); âWhen the Prince travelled to Egypt. Translating Machiavelli in Nineteenth century Cairoâ (Adab and Modernity: a «â Civilising Processâ »?, 2019); The Multiple Renaissances: Revival, Temporality, and Modernity across the Eastern Mediterranean, 1700â1900 (guest editor of the special issue of Oriente Moderno 2021).
Francesco Chiabotti
obtained his PhD in Islamic Studies at the University of Aix-Marseille in 2014. He is Associated Professor for Islamic Studies and Medieval History at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris. His thesis is devoted to the life and the work of the influential Sufi master and theologian Ê¿Abd al-KarÄ«m al-QushayrÄ« (d.465/1072). He has recently published with Bilal Orfali (AUB) The AmÄlÄ« of AbÅ« l-QÄsim al-QushayrÄ« (DÄr al-Machreq, 2020).
Jean-Charles Coulon
is a tenured research scholar at the Arabic department of the Institut de Recherche et dâHistoire des Textes (National Center for Scientific Research, Paris) and editor-in-chief of the journal Arabica. His scholarly interests are in the history of magic and occult sciences in the medieval Islamicate world. Among his recent publications is La magie en terre dâIslam au Moyen Ãge (Paris, CTHS, 2017).
Thibaut dâHubert
(PhD, HDR, EPHE, Paris) is Associate Professor in the department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) at the University of Chicago. His primary domain of research is the literary history of Bengal, and, more broadly, the study of poetics in multilingual contexts. He is the author of two monographs titled In the Shade of the Golden Palace: ÄlÄol and Middle Bengali Poetics in Arakan (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Meaningful Rituals: Persian, Arabic and Bengali in the NÅ«rnÄma Tradition of Eastern Bengal (Delhi: Primus Books, 2022). With Alexandre Papas (CNRS/CETOBAC) he edited a volume titled JÄmÄ« in Regional Contexts: The Reception of Ê¿Abd al-RaḥmÄn JÄmÄ«âs Works in the Islamicate World, ca. 9th/15thâ14th/20th, Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 1 The Near and Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
Faustina C.W. Doufikar-Aerts
is professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is a specialist in the oriental Alexander tradition and the transmission of literary and religious motifs from the Hellenistic period into the Islamic world. She published âA letter in Bits and Pieces: The Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem Arabica. A First Edition with Translation Based on Four 16thâ 18th Century Manuscriptsâ. Writings and Writing. Investigations in Islamic Text and Script in Honour of Dr. Januarius Justus Witkam, Professor of Codicology and Palaeography of the Islamic World at Leyden University, eds. Robert Kerr and Thomas Milo, Cambridge: Archetype, 2013, p. 91â115.
Francesca Gorgoni
(INALCO, Paris) received her PhD from the University INALCO (2017) and is currently post-doctoral student in Arabic and Jewish Medieval Philosophy. Her field of research focuses on the reception of the Greco-Arabic philosophy in the Muslim and Jewish thought with particular attention to the Aristotelian and the Neo-platonic traditions. Her PhD on the 14th centuryâs Hebrew translation of Averroesâ commentary on Aristotleâsâ Poetics is forthcoming for Peeters Publishers in the Collection de la Revue des Ãtudes Juives.
Jonathan Haddad
is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Georgia, specializing in the literature of the eighteenth century. His research examines the role literature plays in the mediation of discourses of Self and Other within the context of French encounters with the Islamicate world. His current book project is a microhistory of the French debates about Turkish literature that followed the 1728 expedition to the Ottoman Empire to collect manuscripts for the Royal Library.
Hilary Kilpatrick
(independent scholar) has researched on classical, Ottoman and modern Arabic literature. With Gerald J. Toomer she published âNiqÅ«lÄwus al-ḤalabÄ« (c.1611âc.1661): a Greek Orthodox Syrian copyist and his letters to Pococke and Goliusâ (2016). She has contributed âStill on the Way Up: the Ascendant Field of Ottoman Arabic Literatureâ to Philological Encounters 7 (3â4) (2022), a special issue entitled âThe Ascendant Field: Critical Engagements with Ottoman Arabic Literatureâ.
István T. Kristó-Nagy
(Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies of the University of Exeter) has published on Islamic social and intellectual history, political and religious thought, wisdom literature and art. He authored La pensée dâIbn al-MuqaffaÊ¿. Un «â agent doubleâ » dans le monde persan et arabe (Versailles: Ãditions de Paris, 2013) and co-edited with Robert Gleave two volumes: Violence in Islamic Thought from the QurʾÄn to the Mongols (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), and Violence in Islamic Thought from the Mongols to European Imperialism (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen
is Professor of Modern History at Sorbonne Université (Paris). She works on the religious and cultural history of Early Modern and Modern Egypt. Her most recent book is: The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta. Egyptâs Legendary Sufi Festival, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, 2019. She edited, with Francesco Chiabotti, Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek et Luca Patrizi, Ethics and Spirituality in Islam: Sufi adab, Brill, Leiden, 2017; and Adab and Modernity. A âCivilising Processâ? (Sixteenth-Twenty-first Century), Leiden, Brill, 2019.
Alessandro Mengozzi
PhD Leiden University, is professor of Semitics at the University of Turin, where he teaches Semitic Philology and Syriac Language and Literature. His main research interests are Neo-Aramaic languages and literatures and Syriac poetry of the Mongol period. His most recent book is Lâinvenzione del dialogo. Dispute e dialoghi in versi nella letteratura siriaca (Paideia, 2020).
Ãtienne Naveau
is Professor of Indonesian and Malay Literature at Inalco (Paris). His research focuses on the perception of Indonesian identity in literary, philosophical, political and religious discourses. Some of his articles deal with Indonesiaâs relationship to the Arab world. For example: âLa réception de lâÅuvre de Khalil Gibran en Indonésieâ, Archipel, 75/2008): 63â110; âLes Orthodoxes syriaques dâIndonésieâ, Les Cahiers de lâOrient, 93, (2009): 111â124.
Bilal Orfali
(PhD. 2009 Yale University) is Sheikh Zayed Chair for Arabic and Islamic Studies and Chairperson of the Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages at the American University of Beirut. He previously held the M.S. Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies at the Ohio State University. He specialises in Arabic literature, Sufism, and Qurʾanic Studies. He co-edits al-Abhath Journal and Brillâs series Texts and Studies on the Qurʾan. He is the author and editor of more than twenty books on Arabic Studies.
Luca Patrizi
obtained his PhD in co-tutoring at the Universities of Aix-Marseille and lâOrientale of Naples. He teaches Islamic Studies at the University of Turin and he has been a Research Fellow at the Universities of Geneva, Paris-Sorbonne, Bonn, and Exeter. Among his recent publications: âUn manuel dâadab et dâakhlaÌq pour les temps modernes: les JawaÌmiÊ¿ al-aÌdaÌb fiÌ akhlaÌq al-anjaÌb de JamaÌl al-DiÌn al-QaÌsimiÌ (1866â1914)â, in Adab and Modernity: A âCivilising Processâ? (Sixteenth-Twenty-first Century), ed. by C. Mayeur-Jaouen, Brill, Leiden, 2019; ââA Gemstone Among the Stonesâ: The Symbolism of Precious Stones in Islam and its Relation with Languageâ, Historia Religionum 10 (2018).
Maurice A. Pomerantz
is Associate Professor of Literature and program head for Arab Crossroads Studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi. His recent books include: Licit Magic: The Life and Letters of al-á¹¢Äḥib b. Ê¿AbbÄd (d. 385/995) (Leiden: Brill, 2018), (with Evelyn Birge Vitz ed.) In The Presence of Power: Court and Performance in The Pre-Modern Middle East (New York: New York University Press, 2017), (with Aram Shahin ed.) The Heritage of Arabo-Islamic Learning (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
Stefan Reichmuth
is a retired Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Ruhr University Bochum. He conducted extended field work in Sudan and Nigeria. His research has focused on the History of Arabic language and literature in Africa, on Islamic Education, Learning and the Sciences, and on transregional scholarly networks in the Islamic World. He has been one of the two principal investigators of the ANR/DFG project âThe Presence of the Prophet. Muhammad in the Mirror of his Community in the Early Modern and Modern Periodsâ (2017â2022). Among his recent publications: âAspects of Prophetic Piety in the Early Modern Periodâ, in: Archives de sciences sociales des religions 178 (JulyâSept. 2017), 129â150; âArabic Writing and Islamic Identity in Colonial Yorubaland: IloÌ£rin and Western Nigeria, ca. 1900â1950â, in: Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen (ed.), Adab and Modernity. A âCivilising Processâ? (Leiden 2019), 552â585.
Ignacio Sánchez
(PhD Cambridge 2012) is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Classics and Ancient History of the University of Warwick. His main research interests are Medieval Islamic intellectual history and history of medicine and science. He has published in a variety of topics including political thought, geography, Islamic endowments and medicine, including the edition and translation of the IkhwÄn al-á¹¢afÄʾâs Epistle 4: On Geography (with J. Montgomery) and Ibn AbÄ« Uá¹£aybiÊ¿aâs The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians (with E. Savage-Smith et al.). He is section editor of Brillâs Encyclopaedia of Islam Three (History of Science) and founder editor of the journal Endowment Studies.
Jakub SypiaÅski
is doctoral student at Sorbonne University (Paris) and Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. He works on the social history of scientific interactions between Muslim societies and the Eastern Roman Empire in early Middle Ages.
Marc Toutant
(Permanent Researcher, CNRS Paris) works on cultural interactions between Central Asia, Indo-Persian and Ottoman cultures. His most recent book is LâAsie centrale de Tamerlan, Paris, Belles Lettres, 2022 (with Alexandre Papas).
Neguin Yavari
(KFG-âMultiple Secularitiesâ, University of Leipzig) studies the history of political thought in the premodern Islamic world. Her publications include, The Future of Iranâs Past: NiáºÄm al-Mulk Remembered, Oxford 2018.