Grad student session

My dissertation, “Objects of Enchantment: The Life and Afterlife of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 606/1210) Hidden Secret,” centers on an Arabic manual of ritual magic written by famed theologian and philosopher Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. The first half of the dissertation provides the first close analysis of Rāzī’s sources, showing how he imagines the pre-Islamic ancient past as a repository of enchanted knowledge and enfolds this knowledge into an Islamic cosmology. The second half of the dissertation traces the circulation of this text, its translation into Persian, and its reception in a variety of contexts, including the Delhi Sultanate and early Ottoman courts, early modern Cairo, and in colonial manuscript libraries. In illustrating the vast popularity of this text, the dissertation both demonstrates the centrality of this genre to Islamic intellectual and political history and also theorizes the meaning of enchantment and disenchantment in a premodern context.

Through a close examination of unstudied Sunnī ziyāra liturgies like those found in Ibn Farhūn’s (d. 1397) Kitāb Irshād al-Sālik, my dissertation challenges the prevailing notion that ziyāra as scripted liturgy was restricted to Shīʿī sources. In my dissertation, I explore the disjunction between premodern and modern Sunnī ziyāra practices and answer: In what contexts did ziyāra liturgies emerge and develop? How did pilgrims engage with ziyāra liturgies? How can we compare ziyāra across sectarian lines? How did ziyāra liturgy communicate certain norms and ideals to spiritual participants? This project highlights several understudied aspects of ziyāra such as the study of female saints and women’s ziyāra to shed light on broader questions of sectarian identity development. My research draws on methods from ritual, material, and gender studies and illustrates that reading ziyāra literature across sectarian divides grants key insight into an understanding of intra-religious relations and sectarianism in the Middle East.

Thousands of Shiʿas gather annually for the Ashura procession in the megacity of Karachi, putting a multitude of languages, practices, and communities on public display whilst signaling power through unity. Karachi’s Ashura procession reflects the complicated entanglements of urbanization, violence, religious and ethnic identities, as well as constantly-changing spatial dynamics in the city. Claiming public space, asserting identity, and operating within a complicated politics of visibility are tied with a major act of religious devotion. The yearly tensions around Karachi’s Ashura procession distill a broader set of contemporary issues about public space, urban religion, and the place of religious minorities in this majority-Sunni postcolonial nation. My dissertation considers the question of minority religion practices in public space amidst a complex context. Centering the Muharram procession as a key element of the city’s urbanization process, I argue that Karachi’s Shiʿas negotiate the relationship between public presence (visibility) and silence (invisibility) as a means to understand and negotiate their positioning in the city and within a larger discussion of what constitutes a “Pakistani Muslim.”

This paper explores the Sufi philosophy known as the “Unity of Being”(waḥdat al-wujūd) in the early modern Ottoman and Mughal Empires. In the 17th century, debates surrounding this system of thought can tell us much about Sufism as well as the history of empire, changing religious demographics, and contests over political and religious authority. This study examines  adherents to the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd like Şeyh Bedreddin (d.1421 c.e.), Mughal prince Dārā Shikūh (d. 1659 c.e.), and ‘Abd al-Ghanī Nābulusī  (d.1731 c.e.) against Aḥmad Sirhindī’s (d. 1624 c.e.) intervention rejecting this doctrine. By exploring these case studies it becomes apparent that anxieties over the demarcation between Islam and non-Muslim religions are at the crux of what makes this philosophy so controversial, and that its defenders attempt to navigate a course between the particulars of Islam and the universalizing worldview of mystical monism.

My research analyzes the al-Kitāb al-Muʿtabar of Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, a key figure in the later development of Avicennism in the Islamic world. I explore how his theory of perception (idrāk) give us an alternative epistemology than Avicennan rationalism and the skepticism that is used to attack it. I look to Abū l-Barakāt’s criticism of Avicenna’s theory of intellect, where al-Baghdādī claims that knowledge consists not in intellectual grasping of forms via the Active Intellect, but in direct perception of the world, the scroll of existence (ṣaḥīfat al-wujūd). I explore whether and how Abū l-Barakāt’s epistemology therefore rejects the traditional contrast between immediate (badīhī) and acquired (iktisāb) knowledge, and so sets up a form of empiricism that does away with the epistemic paradigms of certainty put forward by al-Fārābī, kalām, and Avicennism.

Taqyīd al-mubāḥ (restricting the permissible) refers to the ability of Muslim rulers to restrict acts that the sharīʿa permits in order to prevent a social harm and secure a public benefit. Since the late nineteenth century, this concept has been used to justify the state’s restriction of legally permissible acts such as slavery, child marriage, and verbal divorce. My paper identifies the nineteenth-century Egyptian discussions on polygyny as an instance in which scholars also debated taqyīd al-mubāḥ. This debate reflected the evolving role of the state. Early in the century, scholars didn’t advocate state intervention due to limited power. By the late century, as state control over courts increased, some scholars saw an opportunity to restrict polygyny for the public good, while others argued for limited state intervention and the privacy of marriage. This highlights the tension between the legal tradition and social change, showcasing the strategic use of Islamic legal principles to navigate these challenges.