first article of 2026! and this one comes with a sound file to imagine the chatter & noises that filled the air of a Sasanian city.

🎉 publication day! 🎉 editions & translations of the correspondence btw Umar b. Abd al-Aziz and Leo the Isaurian in medieval Latin, Christian Arabic, Muslim Arabic, Aljamiado, Armenian & early modern Latin. plus the intro to explain how they're all related! open access & available here:

Thanks to all authors, reviewers, & readers as we close out issue 33! We published 550 pages in 2025: 7 articles; a thematic dossier w/ 4 more articles; a roundtable; an Arabic edition; a pedagogy file; 7 book reviews; & some short communications. Here’s a thread to gather some highlights! 🧵

we have a cover! super excited to get close to publication on this project! it’s actually a pretty wild ride, so here’s a brief explanation: 👇

The business meeting marks the official launch of the @alusuralwusta.bsky.social: journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/al.... A huge thanks to @zaydeantrim.bsky.social, @medievalqabq.bsky.social and the editorial board for all of their hard work in bringing this to fruition.

Caucasus Heritage Watch has started crowdfunding. Anyone unfamiliar with their work should devote some time to their website. Satellite monitoring is currently the only way to track the condition of hundreds of Armenian cultural heritage sites in Azerbaijan. Monitoring supports accountability.

New article alert! Join us in exploring a phrase from Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī’s 13th-c. geography. He refers to the Damādim of northeast Africa as “Tatars of the Sūdān.” Hannah Barker interrogates the racializing discourses at play in such comparative claims. [image: British Library Or 1524]

points are made

Enjoying an evening in Khorazm

This morning, members of the Knight Institute’s leadership team published a critical analysis of Columbia University’s settlement agreement with the Trump administration. Read the full analysis here: knightcolumbia.org/blog/what-th...

“Who Remembers the Armenians?” I remember them and I ride the nightmare bus with them each night and my coffee, this morning I’m drinking it with them You, murderer Who remembers you? — Najwan Darwish, Nothing More to Lose (2014)

The Ben Gurion University Middle Eastern Studies department statement - now in English and in Arabic. Israel's policies in Gaza and the nature of the warfare there have exceeded all human and legal standards. تتجاوز سياسة إسرائيل في غزة ونوع الحرب هناك كل معيار إنساني، قانوني وأخلافي

This is the Washington Post (yes, that one): names in Arabic and English, and ages, of all 18,500 children killed in Gaza, plus portraits and stories where available: www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...

I interrupt your daily existential panic to suggest reading this book on a literary history of Anatolia, blending Armenian, Persian, Turkish, Greek. This poem switches btw Turkish & Armenian. The girl's last line is in Armenian: "Let us love one another, it will be sweet"

Thank you to Rise Up, Columbia for the astute analysis as usual and the footnote shoutout to CUIMC Stands Up! We’re a group of medical campus faculty & staff firmly against the exchange of our values for grant funds, even as our jobs & careers are at risk. 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/riseupco...

Columbia University’s agreement with the Trump administration is a disaster for academic freedom, freedom of speech, & the independence of American higher education. Never in the history of our nation has an educational institution so thoroughly bent to the will of an autocrat. 1/

Barnard and Columbia: Profiles in Cowardice. Teaching students that the proper moral response to genocide is to shut the fuck up. gothamist.com/news/columbi...

Good news if you like history, manuscripts, or nice books! 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah' is now available at *greatly* reduced shipping costs via @theul.bsky.social (UK) and Amazon (worldwide) from this link: linktr.ee/nposegay. There's also a free sample file there with the entire first chapter.

yes, but specimens only found in Russia (near Smolensk), Estonia, Finland, &Sweden. none in the former Khaganate. its association with Khazars is based only on the name Moses-- doesn't name ard al-Khazar mint. Idc abt truth of conversion. just pointing out that every Khazar source has a "yes, but"

just learned that Matisse spoke about how he drew inspiration from Byzantine coins, including this one from Tzimiskes's reign

New article alert! How can we rethink word stress in Classical Arabic? This article looks to an unexpected source: the traditional recitation of metra in Persian metrics. This evidence clarifies controversial patterning in Classical Arabic, with implications for Proto-Arabic word stress, as well

The Editors of @alusuralwusta.bsky.social endorse @mesa1966.bsky.social's March 13 Statement on the repression of academic freedom and March 28 Joint Statement regarding Columbia.

🚨BREAKING | Columbia University Sued Over Student Record Disclosure* Mahmoud Khalil, detained pro-Palestinian Columbia graduate, & 7 other students have filed a federal lawsuit against Columbia University, Barnard College, & the U.S. House Committee on Education & Workforce. Here’s what we know 🧵:

💻 Register now for an online seminar with Dr Viola Allegranzi, who will be speaking on 'Architectural Inscriptions from 10th- to 13th-Century Afghanistan as Recorded in Photographic Archives': bit.ly/RethinkHistory 🗓️ Thu 13 Mar, 12pm Toronto/4pm UK time. #Afghanistan #medievalsky #skystorian

next on my pile of interesting books to read! if you're in NYC, please come to hear the authors present their newly-published book on 24 March!

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The only person I want to see us all get behind for President in 2028 is AOC. The rest of the Dems are mostly feckless, spineless and useless

So this is really cool: a stamp impression from the library of the Ilkhanid vizier Rashid al-Din (d. 1318). It reads “pious endowment [waqf] of the Rashidiyya library,” & it may have been inspired by Chinese prints/stamps. Stamped waqf notices are totally unheard of for this time!

New article alert! Explore the history of 15th-century Diyarbakır with us today! This new article relies on literary & epigraphic sources to tell a story of Aqquyunlu rulers & their relationship to the famous Armenian bishop, painter, & poet Mkrtičʻ Nałaš [shown here: remains at nearby Ergani]

If you see this, post an archer [14th-cent depiction from Spitakavor Church, showing the Proshyan prince Amir Hasan. I love this one bc it has a glyph above the horse's head that combines the letters ԱՄՐ to render the name Amir with just one letter; to the right is ՀԱ, the start of his name Hasan]

for anyone in the New York area: Nzhdeh Yeranyan will give a talk on "The Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict: Challenges in Preserving Cultural Heritage" on 10 February

excited to see Umayyad Armenia in UW!

And so we begin 2025! Check out our new article abt how Ibn Khaldun uses al-Idrisi's maps!

I once heard someone refer to Columbia as "the social justice ivy"...

I keep a list of Byzantine (v. loosely defined!) image collections in the OA Resources section of my Byzantine Data website. byzantinedata.org/resources/

this is a really striking installation at the Peabody Museum: Eternal Cities is an "urban palimpsest" created by Mohamad Hafez from 3D prints of the museum's objects. a Sasanian incantation bowl becomes a satellite dish; a cuneiform inscription serves as minaret; a cylinder seal is a water tank

Open access 🔥 Sean W. Anthony and Stephen Shoemaker, Capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE isac.uchicago.edu/research/pub...

Check out Stephen Rapp’s pedagogy file on medieval Georgian coins to use in undergraduate classes! This example combines familiar format: “there is no god but God alone, who has no associate; Muhammad is the messenger of God” in Arabic, w/ Georgian margin “Christ, exalt Bagrat, king of the Apʻxaz”

UW announces the publication of its first-ever roundtable! it showcases a variety of perspectives on the Global Middle Ages—its possibilities, perils, & problems—from fields associated w/ Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies.

Today, I'm leading 20 Members of Congress to demand that the Biden Admin withhold offensive weapons from the Israeli military. U.S. law is clear: if the Netanyahu government does not allow sufficient food & medicine to enter Gaza, then the U.S. cannot send weapons.

New volume of Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists Vol. 32 (2024) journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/al... @alusuralwusta.bsky.social #openaccess @medievalqabq.bsky.social

this week we will be posting about each section in the 2024 issue of UW. to start us off: the master list of peer-reviewed research articles! with many thanks to the authors, reviewers, and readers!

Testing BlueSky’s capacity for historical threads! A thread about my recent paper on Ibn Fadlan, (not) the Vikings, & 10th c. Eurasian trade & diplomacy. Read if you like medieval history, Middle Eastern history, Iranian history, numismatics, economic history, & investigative historiography! 1/?

thanks 😁 this was for a volume on Arabic & multilingualism that was published earlier this year. the contributions are interesting, check out @robhaug.bsky.social on trilingual coins (Arabic, Bactrian, & MP) & @sasanianshah.bsky.social on Middle Iranian languages

Behold, a think-piece! (You should hear that in stentorian a Matt Berry-as-Cravensworth the vampire voice.) Part of a lovely round-table organized by Al-'Usur al-Wusta. I am very gung-ho about global political history and #historysky #medievalsky journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/al...

I've only read two of these roundtable contributions so far (it's a Friday afternoon and my first week of freedom, that's already loads) and they are *excellent*. Excited to read the rest as soon as I can manage it. Well worth a look.

more specifics to come, but for now: 618 pages, hot off the press!! check out the new issue of @alusuralwusta.bsky.social I'd go take a nap to recover, but we already have three articles in production and some more in the pipeline. 2025 is going to be fun!