I'm an intellectual historian who is interested in the course of philosophy in the Islamic world both past and present. Increasingly I am interested in how that study and category of philosophy coincides with the emergent category of global philosophy. In terms of method, my research is informed by the need for a decolonial and reparative study of Islam.

I supervise graduate students broadly in Islamic intellectual history, especially in philosophy, theology and Quranic exegesis. I am the director of the Centre for the Study of Islam.

I work on Islamic intellectual history in the wider Persianate world. My particular interests which grew from my PhD at Cambridge on the philosophy of Mull adr Shrz (d. c. 1636) lie in post-Avicennan philosophical, theological and mystical traditions. My second main area of interest is Quranic exegesis and textual hermeneutics.

I am currently interested in three projects: completing an intellectual history of philosophical traditions in Iran and North India in the 18th century, a diachronic study of the philosophy of time in Islamic thought, and the reception of some European philosophies in the postcolonial Muslim context. On this last project, I have embarked on a seed project with case studies of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan supported by the European Network Fund.

With a former student and colleague Ahab Bdaiwi, I am editing the Oxford Handbook of Shii Islam, as well as an exciting new series of translations of Islamic intellectual traditions for Hackett Publishing.

I have advised various government departments and private sector concerns on Iraq, Iran, Shii Islam in the Gulf, and Islam in Britain and Europe.

I also run a blog that has my various musings on philosophy both Islamic and otherwise as well as notes on manuscript research and related critical editions. The blog entitled Hikmat is available here.

I tweet under the name @mullasadra

For office hours and research leave go here.

Biography:

I come from a Twelver Shi'i background, on my father's side from a family of Razavi sayyids originally from Khurasan who settled in North India.

After a liberal education at Westminster School (1986-91), I read modern history at Christ Church, Oxford (1991-1994) where I developed an interest in philosophy and in particular Islamic philosophy. At the time, because my interests were in the modern world, I read Modern Middle East Studies for an MPhil, staying in Oxford (1994-1996), specialising with a dissertation on philosophy in 19th century Qajar Iran.

I then decided to continue the study of philosophical traditions by focusing on the Safavid period and moved across to the other place. At Pembroke College, Cambridge, I eventually wrote my doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of existence in the thought of the Iranian Safavid philosopher Mulla Sadra Shirazi (d. c. 1635), obtaining my PhD in 2000.

I spent a post-doctoral year as the first fellow in the new Quranic Studies unit at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London.

I then taught for 2 years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol. I have been teaching at the IAIS since 2004.

As a historian, I think that one ought not to escape one's positionality with respect to one's inquiry, its method and subjects.

Research supervision:

I am happy to supervise research students in Islamic intellectual history and the history of Islamic Philosophy, Qur'anic studies, Shi'i thought and aspects of contemporary Islamic thought.

I have examined doctoral students in Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Talinn, Manchester, London and Warsaw.