New Publication | Shari'a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology
New Publication | Shari'a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology

MEI congratulates Director Brinkley Messick on his new book, Shari'a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology.

A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Sharīʿa Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There—while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the sharīʿa, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance—the Zaydī school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway.

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Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development, Writes on Recent Tunisian Demonstrations
Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development, Writes on Recent Tunisian Demonstrations

Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development and author of Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly, comments on the present situation in Tunisia, to offer his perspective on how recent demonstrations in Tunisia may be contextualized, and to counter assertions that they are a reprise of the 2011 revolutionary moment.

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Workshop | Literary Traditions and “convivencia” in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia
Workshop | Literary Traditions and “convivencia” in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia

MEI Faculty Dagmar A. Riedel, currently Marie Curie Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid, is co-organizing with Benito Rial Costas (UCM) an interdisciplinary workshop on literature on prophets and saints in medieval and early modern Iberia. The workshop will take place in Madrid (Spain), on Thursday and Friday, 22-23 February 2018. For more information about the program, see https://researchblogs.cul.columbia.edu/islamicbooks/mashqi/

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Arcapita Visiting Professor Dr. Anaheed Al-Hardan
Arcapita Visiting Professor Dr. Anaheed Al-Hardan

We are pleased to welcome Anaheed Al-Hardan to Columbia University as the Arcapita Visiting Professor for the Spring 2018 semester. Anaheed Al-Hardan comes to us from the American University of Beirut where she is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies.

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Columbia University Libraries awarded grant to digitize Islamic manuscripts and paintings
Columbia University Libraries awarded grant to digitize Islamic manuscripts and paintings

Columbia University Libraries is proud to be a partner recipient of a $500,000 grant to support the digitization of Islamic manuscripts and paintings dating from 1000 to 1900. The Manuscripts of the Muslim World project—supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), which is made possible by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—will provide digital access to 576 Islamic manuscripts and 827 paintings that have previously been largely invisible to scholars. The project will begin in April 2018 and continue for three years.

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