Merlin Swartz

Bio

Professor Emeritus of Religion (Islamic Studies). PhD Harvard University; Chairman ad interim 1981-1982; 1991-1992. Taught previously at the American University (Beirut) and Harvard (Center for Middle Eastern Studies). Levi della Vida lecturer (UCLA 1993). Publications include Ibn al-Jawzi’s Kitab al-Qussas wall-Mudhakkirin (Institut de Lettres Orientales, Beirut 1971); A Seventh-Century Sunni Creed: The ‘Aqida Wasitiya of Ibn Taymiya (Mouton 1974); Studies on Islam (Oxford 1981); Humaniora Islamica, co-editor (Mouton 1973-1974); “Arabic Rhetoric and the Art of tyhe Homily in Medieval Islam” in Religion and Culture in Medieval Isam, dedicated to George Makdisi (Cambridge University Press, 1999): A Medieval Critique of Anthropomorphism: Ibn al-Jawzi’s Kitab Akhbar as-Sifat: A Critical Edition of the Arabic Text with Translation, Introduction and Notes (to be published by E.J. Brill, 2001): a series of articles in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages (Scribners 1988), Encyclopaedia Iranica (Columbia 1998), Encyclopedia of Asian History (Scribners 1988); Encyclopaedia Iranica (Columbia 1998); and “A Hanbali Critique of Anthropomorphism” (Budapest 1999). Fulbright Senior Fellowship for research in Syria, Egypt, and Turkey (1989-1990). Professor Swartz’s research and teaching focus primarily on the religious and intellectual history of medieval Isam.