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I received my B.A. (with Hons.), M.A., and Ph.D. in Islamic Studies (2002) from the University of Cambridge and have taught Islamic Studies, Islamic civilization and history, Arabic and Syriac language and literature at the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES), the American University of Beirut, and at the Faculty of Oriental Studies (now FAMES), University of Cambridge.
My research interests include early Islamic Gulf history, Syriac Christian‐Muslim intellectual history, Abbasid intellectual history and Hindu‐Muslim intellectual encounters.
My publications include a trilogy: The Syriac Writers of Qatar in the Seventh Century; An Anthology of Syriac Writers from Qatar in the Seventh Century; and Dadisho Qatraya’s Compendious Commentary on the Paradise of the Egyptian Fathers in Garshuni. My latest QNRF project entitled “A Preliminary Syriac, Aramaic and Arabic Lexical and Toponymical Survey of Beth Qaṭraye produced two more publications: The Syriac and Arabic Lexicon of Hasan Bar Bahlul (Olaph-Dolath) and Beth Qaṭraye: A Lexical and Toponymical Survey. I also authored a monograph on the Muslim polymath Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī: The Birth of Indology as an Islamic Science. Al-Bīrūnī’s Treatise on Yoga Psychology (Leiden: Brill), and my most recent publication with the Library of Arabic Literature (NYU Press) is entitled The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali by Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī.
