SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In "Three lives, one vision: how Dunant, Demidoff and Abdelkader shaped modern humanitarianism" (ICRC Blog) International Committee of the Red Cross experts Anastasia Kushleyko, Cédric Cotter, and Ahmed Al-Dawo…
SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP
On Islamic Law
- In "Three lives, one vision: how Dunant, Demidoff and Abdelkader shaped modern humanitarianism" (ICRC Blog) International Committee of the Red Cross experts Anastasia Kushleyko, Cédric Cotter, and Ahmed Al-Dawoody "revisit the contributions of Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, Russian philanthropist Anatole Demidoff, and Algerian scholar and leader Emir Abdelkader. Through their efforts to protect prisoners of war, care for the wounded, and uphold humane treatment during conflict, these three figures demonstrated that humanitarian principles were neither confined to one region nor rooted in a single tradition. The authors argue that modern humanitarianism emerged through converging ideas, networks, and practices across different societies, and that revisiting these histories can help reaffirm the universal character of humanitarian principles today."
- In a recent essay, "His Favourite Camel" (London Review of Books), Youssef Ben Ismail (Amherst College) reviews Justin Marozzi's (independent journalist) Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World (Pegasus Books). The book argues that "Arab Muslims adapted and regulated this practice within an Islamic context. Sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammed, legitimated by the Quran and holy law, slavery endured for fifteen centuries. Abolition had few champions and came late in the day—hereditary slavery continues even today in Mali and Mauritania. Captives and Companions takes the reader on an extraordinary historical journey across deserts, continents and oceans, from Baghdad to Bamako, Tripoli to Timbuktu, Istanbul to the Black Sea, and reveals a hidden but vital chapter in our understanding of world civilization."
On Islam and AI/Data Science
- In "OpenITI MAKHZAN: An Open Annotated Dataset of Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu Print and Manuscript Data" (Journal of Open Humanities Data), Jonathan Parkes Allen (University of Maryland) and others introduce OpenITI MAKHZAN, a "large aggregation of Arabic-script ground truth and evaluation data drawn from a wide variety of Persian, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu scribal print and handwritten (manuscript) documents." Their article "explains the different types of data in this large dataset and how this data was compiled and verified and suggests potential use cases for it, such as the training and evaluation of new print and handwritten transcription models."
FIELD GUIDE TO ISLAMIC LAW ONLINE: RECENT SOURCES
The Field Guide to Islamic Law Online is an ever-growing collection of links to hundreds of primary sources and archival collections around the world, online. We recently added a new resource to this list:
- Kān Zamān is a date converter designed for academics working on the Islamicate world. It features a toggle for dyslexic-friendly reading and an uncluttered UI, the ability to choose between conversions for an entire year range or a specific day, support for Arabic-Indic and Western Arabic numerals inputs, and outputs in English, IJMES transliteration, and Arabic script.
UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Events:
- Conference: Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Annual Conference, Chicago, June 17–18, 2026
- Workshop: Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Graduate Student Workshop, July 25–26, 2026
- Workshop: Archival Abundances and Silences in Islamic Studies, Princeton University, October 2–3, 2026
- Conference: Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 21–24, 2026
- Conference: The Institutional Embedding of Shiʿi Imams: Kinship, Caliphs, Courts and Companions (700-900), University of Leiden, January 13–15, 2027
Opportunities:
- Call for Papers: The Institutional Embedding of Shiʿi Imams: Kinship, Caliphs, Courts and Companions (700-900), University of Leiden, June 20, 2026
- Position Opening: Visiting Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle East, Colby College, July 1, 2026
- Call for Participation: Digital Medieval Studies Institute, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 10, 2026
- Award: Gwenn Okruhlik Dissertation Award, Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, July 15, 2026
- Award: Graduate Paper Prize, Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, July 15, 2026
- Award: Student Travel Award, Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, September 1, 2026
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