User:Merlin Swartz

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

I am a professional historian with a specialization in medieval Islamic intellectual history. I have a PhD from Harvard and have taught at the American University in Beirut, at Harvard and at Boston University in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. I have lived and done research in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran and Egypt at various points in time over the past twenty-five years. My publications include the following books: A Medieval Critique of Anthropomorphism (Brill 2002), Studies on Islam (Oxford 1981), A Seventh-Century Sunni Creed: The ‘Aqida Wasitiyya of Ibn Taymiya in Humaniora Islamica (The Hague 1974), and a number of articles, among them “Arabic Rhetoric and the Art of the Homily in Medieval Islam,” Religion and Culture in Medieval Islam (Levi Della Vida Volume dedicated to G. Makdisi), R. Hovannisian, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). My university teaching has focused on Islam (ranging from introductory, survey courses to specialized courses on such things as Islamic jurisprudence, the Quran, etc.); but my teaching has also included courses in the general area of history of religion. I lecture frequently in public settings outside the academic community in places like churches, temples, mosques, etc.