SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP
On Islamic Law
- In “Rethinking Sharia & Keeping It Real Featuring Intisar Rabb” (A Moment with Erik Fleming), Intisar Rabb (Harvard Law School) ”talks about her legal achievements and why Americans should not be afraid of Sharia law.”
- In “The Trial of ʿĀʾisha: Aesthetics and Norm in an Early Islamic Story About Slander” (Der Islam) Nora K. Schmid (University of Tübingen) “argue[s] that [the Ḥadīth al-Ifk’s] different iterations and the aesthetics of storytelling contributed toward the creation of a normative world based on Islamic values.” [login required]
- In “Legal Education and Legal Theory in Egypt and China” (Legal Theory in the Colonies, Cambridge University Press), Assaf Likhovski (Tel Aviv University) “examines the development of legal education and legal theory in Egypt and China in the early twentieth century… Egyptian jurists blended Western jurisprudential theories with Islamic legal traditions, portraying Islamic law as dynamic, democratic, and compatible with liberal and socialist ideals. In China, the creation of a modern legal education system led to the establishment of institutions such as Soochow University’s Comparative Law School, which promoted a curriculum based on comparative law and sociological jurisprudence.” Likhovski “concludes with a discussion of mutual influence between the different places examined, arguing that similarities were not due to direct influence but to shared intellectual environments shaped by anti-colonial nationalism.”
On Islam and Data Science
- In “Just the Two of Us: Italian Qurʾan Translations Synopsis and a Computational Framework for a Fine-Grained Lexical Dispersion through Multilingual Embeddings” (Islam in History), Riccardo Amerigo Vigliermo (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) “proposes a set of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications grounded in a human-curated synopsis of Italian Qurʾan translations conceived as a high-quality, expert-verified dataset.”
FIELD GUIDE TO ISLAMIC LAW ONLINE: RECENT SOURCES
The Field Guide to Islamic Law Online is an ever-growing collection of links to hundreds of primary sources and archival collections around the world, online. We recently added new resources to this list:
- The Refugee Studies Digital Archive is a “a digital library of writings by and about refugees, particularly Palestinian intellectuals,” containing over 1,700 Arabic titles.
UPCOMING EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Harvard/PIL Events:
- Reception: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the Middle East Studies Association 2026 Annual Meeting, November 23, 2026
Global Events:
- Seminar: “Muslim Legal Practitioners in Australia: Identity, Inclusion and the Legal Profession,” Monash University Moot Court, November 12, 2026
- Conference: American Society for Legal History Annual Meeting, Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 12–14, 2026
- Conference: Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 21–24, 2026
- Conference: The Institutional Embedding of Shiʿi Imams: Kinship, Caliphs, Courts and Companions (700-900), University of Leiden, January 13–15, 2027
- Conference: Rupture or Continuity in Sharīʿa: (De)Colonizing Sharīʿa? International Conference, Centre for Islamic Studies (ISAM), Istanbul, Turkey, June 9–11, 2027
Harvard/PIL Opportunities:
- Call for Papers: Con-IH 2027: Transimperial Histories, November 13, 2026
Global Opportunities:
- Position Opening: Tenure-track/Tenured Professor of the History of the Modern Middle East, Cornell University, November 15, 2026
- Position Opening: Associate Professor in Iranian History, Wadham College, University of Oxford, January 4, 2027
- Call for Papers: St. Andrews Early Modern Postgraduate Workshop, January 8, 2027