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Ahmad Khan

  • Position: Assistant Professor
  • Department: Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations
  • Email: ahmad.khan@aucegypt.edu
Brief Biography

Ahmad Khan’s research focuses on classical Islamic thought (tafsir, hadith, law, and Sufism) in its intellectual, social, and historical contexts. His first book, a co-edited volume, explored medieval and modern Islamic thought Reclaiming Islamic Tradition: Modern Interpretations of the Classical Heritage, Edinburgh University Press. His second book examined the formation of medieval Sunnism, with a focus on debates over orthodoxy and heresy, Heresy and the Formation of Medieval Islamic Orthodoxy: The Making of Sunnism, Cambridge University Press. He is currently finishing his third book, looking at Islamic law and society in medieval Khurasan. His current research project examines the development of Quranic interpretation (tafsir). He is also preparing critical editions and studies of several medieval Sufi texts. 

Khan received his DPhil from the University of Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Studies, where he also completed his MPhil. He currently serves on the editorial board at Gorgias Press for its book series on Islamic history and thought, as well as the editorial board of the journal Philological Encounters (Brill).

Khan joined The American University in Cairo (AUC) as an assistant professor in 2018. Prior to AUC, he worked at Oxford and Hamburg universities. In 2022, he was appointed the Arcapita visiting professor at Columbia University in New York.

At AUC, Khan teaches courses and supervises master's student research on Islamic studies and civilizations, as well as Arabic and Persian texts.

Research Interest
  • Quranic exegesis

  • Hadith learning

  • Islamic law and legal history

  • Sufism

  • Orthodoxy and heresy in Islam

  • Islamic thought in an age of print

Books

  • Heresy and the Formation of Medieval Islamic Orthodoxy: The Making of Sunnism, from the Eighth to the Eleventh Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
  • A. Khan and E. Kendall (eds.), Reclaiming Islamic Tradition: Modern Interpretations of the Classical Heritage (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016; paperback reissue 2018).

Articles (peer-reviewed) 

  • An Empire of Elites: Mobility in the Early Islamic Empire, in S. Heidemann and H. Lena-Hagemann (eds.), Connecting the Early Islamic Empire: Transregional and Regional Elites (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2020), 147-69.
  • Dispatches from Cairo to India: Editors, Publishing Houses, and a Republic of Letters, Journal of Islamic Studies, 31:2 (2020), 226-55.
  • Islamic Tradition in an Age of Print: Editing, Printing, and Publishing the Classical Heritage, in Reclaiming Islamic Tradition: Modern Interpretations of the Classical Heritage (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016; paperback reissue 2018), 52-100.
  • Introduction to the study of Islam

  • Introduction to Sufism

  • Religion and politics in Islam

  • Quranic studies

  • Hadith studies

  • Islamic law

  • Islam: 14 classics and commentaries

  • Islam in 14 Egyptian lives

  • Seminar in Arabic texts

  • Classical Arabic grammar and texts

  • Classical Persian grammar and texts

  • The Transmission and Recitation of the Quran in Mamluk Cairo

  • Quranic Philology in the 8th-9th centuries

  • Adhkar and Ahzab in Islamic Thought: Invocation and Devotion in Mamluk Egypt

  • Printing Devotion: Islamic Mystical Texts in Transregional Printing Networks

  • Ibn ʿArabi’s Conception of the Perfect Man

  • Texts, Language, and History in Madhhab-Law Tradition: A Study of the Shafiʿi School