My latest book, on open access!
Ottomans and the Supernatural: Nature and the Limits of Knowledge in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire url: academic.oup.com/book/61617
Screenshot of the Opening to a review in Plekos on Byzantine epitomes that highlights the limitations of AI summaries
Love the epigraph choice for this review on Byzantine epitomesβ¦ π€£π€£
Ψ¨Ψ±Ψ¨Ψ§Ψ― Ϊ©Ψ±ΩΫ Ϊ©Ϋ Ψ§ΩΨ± Ψ¨ΪΎΫ Ψ±Ψ§Ψ³ΨͺΫ ΨͺΪΎΫ ΩΨ±Ψ§Ψ²
Proofs for a forthcoming chapter on angelic invocation
Finally got proofs for this⦠my first publication on the science of angelic invocation as found in the writings of the famous Shah Waliullah of Dihlawi known for his expertise in hadith sciences and almost not at all for his occultism!!
"In the 1950s and 1960s, the Dominicans collected rare printed books in Arabic, particularly Muslim devotional works . . . These books are slim and ephemeral . . . Most other repositories of rare books in the Muslim world donβt think theyβre worth collecting."
Anyone who invokes "Western civilization" as a useful category should be forced to participate in this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Ai...
Since this site is apparently dying, I would love to get @contingent-mag.bsky.social to 10k followers before the end.
I have no idea what this is in reference to but describes me almost perfectly... π₯²
My institution is hiring a Director of Spiritual Diversity: a role for someone interested in fostering non-Catholic spiritual/religious life on our Jesuit campus.
wd1.myworkdaysite.com/en-US/recrui...
Just discovered that my 1-yr old child is effectively barred from entering the UK unless we shell out a $650 fee or navigate the near-impossible process of applying for a UK passport remotely (requiring a grandparental birth certificate we don't have). π±
bbc.com/news/articles/cx2d9yk2kpjo
5-year old after weekly hair-washing:
"Baba, now I'm going to wash your hai....polish your head."
π₯²
And again in the card aisle⦠#arabicfail
Pile of wooden cats
Tenure application guidelines: your scholarship should constitute a coherent body of work.
My scholarship:
Enjoyed the first episode of Night Manager but it blows my mind that these kinds of error still slip through the cracks⦠#arabicfail
Strange that this is not yet showing up in most US media...
Debunked Hindutva revisionism, now a Bollywood film.
βWhat [the film] has done instead is rehash discredited claims that once were relegated to the fringes of the internet, giving prominence to efforts to inflame sectarian tensionsβ
Gift link
Unique opportunity to study Classical Persian, Urdu, and Chaghatay in Yerevan
ferdowsi.org/ferdowsi-sum...
I'm taking a mandated course on how to recognize student hazing. Hazing can include sleep deprivation, humiliating rituals and implied threats to gain acceptance to an exclusive group.
Unrelatedly, I'm prepping a tenure file on 5-hrs sleep...and if I don't do it right I'll lose my job next year.
The downside is that most of us canβt afford to live in houses with gardens.
One of the best things about living in California is the way people leave out boxes of winter citrus fruit because the trees in their garden produce far more than any household could possibly consume.
Call for applications: The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhism Public Scholars program at ACLSβeligible scholars are invited to apply for positions in the US, Canada, and UK by January 27.
Another book to look forward to in 2026!
And another Alam-Subrahamanyam is also arriving in Feburary...a feast for historians of the Mughal world!
sunypress.edu/Books/M/Mirr...
Absolutely cannot wait to see this come out next month. The editors - Asad Ahmed and his students at Berkeley - are doing groundbreaking work on the intellectual history of the Timurid/Mughal period...
resolve.cambridge.org/core/books/i...
Here, the authors present a pair of third-millennium BC copper cymbals, excavated at Dahwa, #Oman ... Not only do the cymbals add to...evidence interpreted in terms of Indus migrants in Early Bronze Age Oman, they also suggest shared musical and potentially ritual practices around the Arabian Gulf.
BOOKS, BINDINGS AND BIBLIOPHILIA IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD: This short course in the codicology of Arabic/Persian manuscripts is coming up at SOAS in February, with fantastic speakers, and I'll be giving the talk on (well, what else?) ink materials and pigments.
www.soas.ac.uk/study/find-c...
If theyβre not careful the FIFA Peace Prize is gonna mean nothing
On a personal level itβs been a whirlwind of year: had a child, became a US citizen, presented work in Uzbekistan and Marseille, had two articles published, submitted a translation of an Arabic treatise on dreaming, and taught 100+ students. Hoping 2026 will be slightly less eventfulβ¦
Photo of paragraph from Vikram Sethβs Two Lives
Lovely anecdote from Vikram Sethβs Two Lives where he discusses his German Jewish aunt crying after being served Marmite at the home of the famous Islamic studies scholar AJ Arberry where she worked after fleeing Berlin in 1939. #Marmite #Britishdelicacies
Thanks! Itβs been a rough 24 hours
