1226 Park Street
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Elias G. Saba
Elias G. Saba received his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. He was awarded the British Association of Islamic Studies De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World in 2018 for his dissertation. His first monograph, Harmonizing Similarities: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law (De Gruyter, 2019) is a study of the legal distinctions literature in Islamic law and its role in the development of the Islamic legal heritage. His primary research focus is on the classical Islamic heritage, its interpretations, and epistemological problems in the study of pre-modern Islam. He is currently at work on several projects. Together with Matthew L. Keegan, he is currently completing an edition and translation of Khal蘋l al-Kh贖r蘋's novella Oh, No! I'm not European. This project is under contract with NYU Press. He is also working on two other projects. The first is a kind of phenomenological study of Islamic legal thought in fourteenth century Cairo. This project is interested in seeing how scholars understood Islamic law, how they put legal knowledge into conversation with other scholarly disciplines, and what kinds of legal knowledge scholars produced. Saba is also working on a longer history of Arabic prosody (尪硃娶贖廎) and the purposes that scholarly pursuit of prosody had in the premodern and early modern period. He teaches course on religion in the Middle East, the history of Islam and Islamic societies, and theory and method in religion.
Education and Degrees
Ph. D. University of Pennsylvania, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
A. M. University of Pennsylvania, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
A. B. Cornell University, Near Eastern Studies
Selected Publications
Elias G. Saba, Harmonizing Similarities: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.
Elias G. Saba, Memories of al-Shfi尪蘋s Inquisition, Journal of Abbasid Studies, published online 24 September 2024.
Elias G. Saba, Canonizing al-Fur贖q: Shihb al-D蘋n al-Qarf蘋s Text on Legal Canons, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, published online 7 June 2024. .
Elias G. Saba, "Selections from al-Manth贖r f蘋-l-Qaw尪id of Badr al-D蘋n al-Zarkash蘋 in Islamic Law in Context: A Primary Source Reader. Edited by Omar Anchassi and Robert Gleave, 4757. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
Thomas Levi Thompson, Emily Drumsta, and Elias G. Saba, Translating Tahrir: From Praxis to Theory with Tahrir Documents in Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation, edited by Sameh F. Hanna, Hanem El-Farahaty and Abdel Wahab Khalifa. New York: Routledge, 2019.
Elias G. Saba (trans.), "The Book of Claims for Buildings, Roads, and Waterways (selections)" by 尪Umar ibn 尪Abd al-尪Az蘋z al-廜糎dr al-Shah蘋d in Art in Translation 11.3: 26585.
Elias G. Saba and Thomas Levi Thompson (trans.), Al-Azhar Draft Constitution of 1979, in Constitutionalism, Human Rights, and Islam after the Arab Spring. Edited by Rainer Grote and Tilmann J. R繹der, 113119. Oxford: Oxford University Press.