Tanvir Ahmed
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Mail code: 4402Campus: Tempe
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Tanvir Ahmed is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. His work focuses on rebellion, thaumaturgy, and historiography between premodern Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. His current book project, entitled "Barefoot Governors and Screaming Saints: A Cultural History of Medieval Muslim Rebellion," investigates popular uprisings in the Mongol Empire through diverse case studies. By doing so, the book offers a retelling of Islamic history rooted in rebels’ astrological prophecies, supernatural conjurations, blessed genealogies, and eye-searing miracles. Ahmed’s research has appeared in History & Theory, the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. These pieces explore matters such as the gravescapes of medieval Herat, haunted revolts in early modern Kandahar, the shrines of Kabul during moments of conquest, and more. In addition to his scholarship, Ahmed's works of short fiction have been published in several forums.
Ph.D. Religious Studies (Islam, Society and Culture), Brown University, 2021
M.A. Religious Studies (Islamic Studies), Stanford University, 2016
B.A. International Affairs (Middle East Studies), The George Washington University, 2014
"Green Boughs on the Graves: Unmooring Herat from Imperial Time," History & Theory, vol. 62, issue 3 (2023): 367–385.
"Miraculous Edges of Rebellion: On the Strange History of Ḥājjī Mīr Khān," Afghanistan, vol. 6 no. 2 (2023): 107–124.
"The Unyielding Dead: Interring Conquest in the Graves of God's Friends," Study of Islam in Central Eurasia, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 20 March 2023.
“As Mīr Ways Khān slept: miraculous possibilities in Afghan history,” Edinburgh University Press Blog, 17 May 2024.
"“All the world at the palm of the hand”: imagining history through the life of an early Afghan saint," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies vol. 87, no. 1 (2024): 151–67.
"Demonic Descents: Contests in Islamic Tribal Etiology," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 67, no. 3-4 (2024): 401–424.
(co-authored with Shahzad Bashir) “Abū l-Majd Tabrīzī (d. after 736/1336) on the debate between the ear and the eye,” in Islamic Sensory History, Volume 2: 600–1500, eds. Adam Bursi and Christian Lange (Brill: Leiden, 2024): 159–69.
“Churchill’s Heresiography: On the Epistemological Anarchies of 19th-Century Malakand,” Afghanistan vol. 7 no. 2 (2024): 134–9.