Office Hours
Fall 2024: Tuesdays, 12:10 - 2:10 PM
Ali Karjoo-Ravary specializes in intellectual, social, and visual histories of premodern Islam in Arabic, Persian, and Turkic language sources. He is particularly interested in genres of historical writing, the role of cosmology in politics, Sufism, and multilingual poetry in the Islamic East (Mashriq). His book, currently titled Muhammad’s Song: Politics, Performance, and Cosmology in the Fourteenth Century, examines the formation of post-Mongol Islamic monarchy through the life and rule of Kadi Burhaneddin, a scholar turned poet-king in Anatolia whose writing and reception prefigured many of the hallmarks of later Islamic empires. Karjoo-Ravary’s research has been featured in a number of scholarly and popular venues, including bylines in Slate and AlJazeera English, as well as interviews with the BBC and CBC.
Publications
“Mapping the Unseen: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Maps in al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya,” in Journal of Sufi Studies, 12.1 (2023).
“Mirrors in the Dream of the Alone: A Glimpse at the Poetry of Bīdil,” in Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation: Texts and Studies in Honor of William C. Chittick and Sachiko Murata, ed. Mohammed Rustom (Brill 2023).
“Illustrating the Forms: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 638/1240) Images in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya” in Visualizing Sufism: Studies on Graphic Representations in Sufi Literature (13th to 16th Century), ed. Giovanni Maria Martini (Brill 2023).
“Adorning the King of Islam: Weaving and Unraveling History in Astarabadi’s Feasting and Fighting,” in MAVCOR Journal 6, no. 2 (2022).
“From the Remainder of Adam’s Clay: Chapter Eight of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya” in Journal of Sufi Studies, 10.1-2 (2021).
Education
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2018
M.A., University of Pennsylvania , 2016
B.A., SUNY Stony Brook, 2011
Columbia University