Professor

About

  • Role

    Faculty

  • Position

    • Professor

  • Concentration

    • Middle East

  • Department

    • History

  • Education

    • PhD, University of Wisconsin

Biography

I joined the Department of History at Colorado State University in 1996. My teaching repertoire includes a range of courses on ancient, medieval, and modern Middle East history with a special emphasis on the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as inter-communal relations in the region. My research is focused on the history and historiography of the Islamic Near East in the middle ages. I also administer CSU’s Religious Studies Interdisciplinary Minor.

Courses (semester last taught)

HIST 115 The Islamic World: Late Antiquity to 1500 (S 2025)
HIST 201 Approaches to History: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Travel Narratives from Late Antiquity to the Crusader Period (F 2025)
HIST 400C Topics in History: Christianity in the Near East, 300–1000 (S 2026)
HIST 431 Ancient Israel (F 2023)
HIST 432 Sacred History in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament* (S 2026)
HIST 433 Muhammad and the Origins of Islam* (F 2025)
HIST 435 Jihad in Islamic History* (F 2024)
HIST 436 The Holy Land: Ancient to Modern* (S 2024)
HIST 532 Reading Seminar: Middle East (F 2024)
LB 393 Seminar: The Council of Nicaea—How it Shaped Christianity (F 2025)
* Also offered via CSU Online.

Publications

Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An Anthology (edited and translated with Suleiman A. Mourad). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2021. Click here for the New Books Network podcast in which Suleiman and I discuss the anthology.

The Intensification and Reorientation of Sunni Jihad Ideology in the Crusader Period: Ibn ʿAsakir of Damascus (1105–1176) and His Age; with an edition and translation of Ibn ʿAsakir’s The Forty Hadiths for Inciting Jihad (co-authored with Suleiman A. Mourad). Leiden: Brill, 2013. (Issued in paperback in 2015.)

Historical Dimensions of Islam: Pre-Modern and Modern Periods—Essays in Honor of R. Stephen Humphreys (co-edited with Jon Armajani). Princeton: Darwin Press, 2009.

Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. (Paperback: Hackett Publishing, 2008; Arabic Translation: al-ʿAlim al-Islami fi al-ʿUsur al-Wusta. Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, Kalima, 2012.)

Ibn ʿAsakir and Early Islamic History (ed.). Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, no. 20. Princeton: Darwin Press, 2001. (Reissued: Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2021.)