We are delighted to introduce Ahmad A. Ahmad, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as our October guest blog editor. Throughout the month of October, Professor Ahmad will share a series of posts in which he examines curious parallel doctrines and institutions found in Islamic and Roman law.
Professor Ahmad is the co-editor of the ‘Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law’ (2019) and author of ‘Islamic Law: Cases, Authorities, and Worldview’ (2017), ‘Pitfalls of Scholarship: Lessons from Islamic Studies’ (2016) ‘The Fatigue of the Sharia’ (2012), and ‘Structural Interrelations of Theory and Practice in Islamic Law’ (2006). He holds a PhD from Harvard University, and his research and teaching focus on Islamic law and legal epistemology in the medieval and early modern periods. Professor Ahmad also serves on the academic advisory board for the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement & the editorial board for the Multi-Disciplinary Publishing Institute (MDPI)’s journal Religions. He previously served as associate academic director of the University of California Center in Washington, Sultan Qaboos Chair of Mideast Studies at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and as visiting associate professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Currently Professor Ahmad is on sabbatical in Istanbul rediscovering, and more frequently discovering for the first time, its rich manuscript collections.
For more on Professor Ahmad’s work, visit his faculty page.