Was doing homework at a coffee shop in nyc when a couple asked if they could use the other end of the table (I said yes). I wasn’t wearing glasses. The woman turned to the man and exclaimed “darling, you’re gorgeous.” I put on my glasses. It was James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Rachel Weisz.

My new article has just posted. It’s on an Ayyubid prince (nephew of Saladin) who wrote a spirited defense of Abu Hanifa to rebut the polemical reports found in al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’s history. Free eprint here. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SQATY...

Looking for a Christmas gift that won’t arrive until March? As you do… well, my book is available for pre-order and there’s a 40% discount until the end of the month! (Discount code PENN-HOLIDAY25). www.pennpress.org/978151282887...

Looking for a Christmas gift that won’t arrive until March? As you do… well, my book is available for pre-order and there’s a 40% discount until the end of the month! (Discount code PENN-HOLIDAY25). www.pennpress.org/978151282887...

"Harvard can't use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions" is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It's vanishingly few steps removed from "Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."

My first monograph "Before World Literature" will be released by the University of Pennsylvania Press in March 2026. I hope it will be of interest to folks in comparative literature, Islamic studies, and classical Arabic literature. www.pennpress.org/978151282887...

Some advice from the 12th century for authors... لا تحسبنْ أنّ بالكتـــــــــــــــــــــــــب مثلنا ستصير فللدجاجة ريشٌ ولكنها لا تطير Don't ever think that the likes of us will live on through books. The chicken has feathers, But it cannot fly. - Ibn al-Dahhān (d. 1174 CE)

For those interested in Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies in West Africa, I recommend Sulaiman A. Alagunfon's study of the Arabic Maqāma. It shatters a lot of myths about Arabic literature and Islamic education. My foreword to the book can be found here: www.academia.edu/129479952/Fo...

Muhammad Amin al-Khanji, who died in 1939, was a prolific publisher of classical Arabic texts. He also became a manuscript trader who shaped the major collections of Egypt, Europe, and America. My colleagues at the IAS have been working on this amazing project -- described in the linked article.

Archiving posts from the hellsite: An article of mine was selected in 2023 as the article of the month over at The Mediterranean Seminar. The article is "Rethinking Poetry as (Anti-Crusader) Propaganda." www.mediterraneanseminar.org/2023-june-ar...

I'll be posting some material from the old hellsite because I was trying to post pre-publication material and to summarize already-published stuff that people might not available. I'll start with Leo Africanus’s Cosmography. The recent translation had some glancing citations of my scholarship.

I'm working on a 13th-century manuscript of Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq — transmitted from the author al-Sarrāj to the most famous female scholar of the age Fakhr al-Nisāʾ to the copyist Ibn al-Khayyir. Extensive reading & audition notes throughout the MS. I'll be posting provisional transcriptions for fun!

Transcription challenge (and a distraction from it all). I've been working on transcribing some samāʿāt but still lots of uncertainties. More on this manuscript to come IA. It is a copy of Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq with a riwāya that goes through Fakhr al-Nisāʾ. Suggestions welcome #arabic #مخطوطات

Please join me and Matt Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social for a discussion of the book Black Knights by Rachel Schine @rachelschine.bsky.social with discussant Kristina Richardson columbiauniversity.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Happy to have helped in a tiny way with this translation of Leo Africanus’s Cosmography, in which there is a glancing reference to a commentary on Al-Hariri’s Maqamat… that thing I wrote my dissertation about.

In the Prettyman courthouse today there was talk of the co-conspirator Cheesebro. These names… I can’t.

@arablit.bsky.social is here!!! Follow them for content to brighten your feeds with Arabic literature (in English) :)

Welcome to August, y’all. It’s the Sunday Scaries but for a whole month…