Dr. Armaan Siddiqi is the winner of the 2024 Alwaleed Bin Talal Dissertation Prize in Islamic Studies for her dissertation, "Portrait of a Moroccan ʿālim: Shaykh Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī’s Life, Works, and World (1858 - 1927)." In this episode, Armaan talks about her research on al-Kattani, a traditionally-trained Moroccan Muslim scholar who came from a prominent family of scholars, Sufis, and descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. While scholarship on Islam in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has focused on the Muslim reformers and the Middle East, Armaan's... Read more about Ep. 19 | Portrait of a Moroccan ʿĀlim: Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī’s Life, Works, and World | Dr. Armaan Siddiqi

Abstract: During the ninth/fifteenth century, Shiraz sustained its prominence as an intellectual epicenter in Iran. Although substantial research has recently been conducted on Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 903/1498) and Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502), two eminent philosophers of the city writing and teaching during the latter half of the century, the scholarly activities of the earlier period remain underexplored. This gap is particularly noticeable between the demise of Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī in 816/1413 and the ascendance of Dashtakī and Dawānī, both of whom trace their intellectual...

Read more about New Article by Dr. Shahrad Shahvand, 2023-24 Alwaleed Postdoctoral Fellow: "In Search of Qiwām al-Dīn and Humām al-Dīn al-Kurbālī: Bridging a Gap in the Intellectual History of Fifteenth-Century Shiraz"

The Selection Committee is pleased to announce Jana Amin (NELC and Anthropology) as winner of the 2025 Alwaleed Bin Talal Undergraduate Thesis Prize in Islamic Studies for her thesis entitled, “Tasting Freedom: Palestinian Women's Kitchens as Sites of Ethnography, Refuge, and Resistance in Cairo.” Jana studies how Palestinian women refugees in Egypt share their stories and experiences of loss, resilience, violence, and resistance through cooking. While media and humanitarian narratives primarily portray women as the victims of violence and displacement, Jana challenges...

Read more about 2025 Alwaleed Bin Talal Undergraduate Thesis Prize Announcement