Ahmed El Shamsy

Assistant Professor B.A. University of London, 2000 M.Sc. University of London, 2002 M.A. Harvard University, 2006 Ph.D. Harvard University, 2009

Research Interests

Ahmed El Shamsy's research and teaching focus on the history of North Africa and the Middle East mainly between the seventh and fifteenth centuries. He is particularly interested in intellectual history, cultures of orality and literacy, education, and Islamic law. He is currently working on a book on the early evolution of Islamic law and its institutions in ninth-century Egypt. Other current and upcoming research projects investigate the formal aspects of medieval Muslim education; the reinvention of the traditional scholarly canon in early twentieth-century Egypt; and the nexus of tribal affiliation, religious allegiances, and communal identity in premodern North Africa. El Shamsy's recent publications include articles on legal history in the Journal of the American Oriental Society and in Islamic Law and Society. His passion is medieval Arabic manuscripts, and he is in the process of editing a number of texts that he has discovered during research travels in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Europe.