Selected Publications
Books
Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2023).
Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam: The Abbasid Caliphate in the Early Ninth Century (Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 2009).
Tatawwur al-Fikr al-Siyasi ‘inda Ahl al-Sunna: Fatrat al-Takwin [The Development of Sunni Political Thought: The Formative Period] (Amman: Dar al-Bashir, 1993). Reviewed in Usur al-Wusta: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists, 10/1 (1998).
Articles
"Language of Empire: Politics of Arabic and Persian in the Abbasid World,” PMLA 130/2 (March 2015), pp. 384-392.
“Translation as Self-Consciousness: The Abbasid Translation Movement, Ancient Sciences, and Antediluvian Wisdom (ca. 750-850),” Journal of World History 20/4 (2009), pp. 523-557.
“Ancient Imperial Heritage and Islamic Universal Historiography: Al-Dinawari’s Secular Perspective,” Journal of Global History 2.2 (2007), pp. 135-155.
“Political Anarchism, Dissent, and Marginal Groups in the Early Ninth Century: The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila Revisited,” The Lineaments of Islam: studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner, Paul Cobb, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 61-84.
“Justification of Political Authority in Medieval Sunni Thought,” Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns, Asma Afsaruddin, ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
“Cemaatten İmparatorluğa: İslam’ın Erken Dönem Fetih Tasavvurlarında Bizans ve İstanbul” [From Community to Empire: The Image of Byzantium and Constantinople in the Early Muslim Conquest Narratives], Toplumsal Tarih 254 (Şubat/February 2015), pp.54-62.
“Allahın Halifesi ve Dünyanın Kadısı: Bir Dünya Imparatorluğu Olarak Hilafet” [God’s Caliph and World’s Judge: The Caliphate as a World Empire], Divan: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi, 22 (2007), pp. 133-146.
Selected Courses
Caliphate in Theory and Practice
Islamic Political Thought
History of Food in the Middle East
History of Slavery in the Middle East
Muhammad in History and Literature
The World of Books in Medieval Islam
Middle East to 1250
Islam and Modernity
Islamic Civilization
Literatures of the Islamic Middle East
Modern Standard Arabic (for beginners and advanced students)
Advanced reading in Arabic
A City of Peace: Baghdad in Medieval Times