Shariah Program Classical Arabic Music
Early Islamic period
Arabic maqam is the system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music, which is mainly melodic. The word maqam in Arabic means 'station' and denotes a melody type built on a scale and carrying a tradition that defines its habitual phrases, important notes, melodic development and modulation. Both compositions and improvisations in traditional Arabic music are based on the maqam system. Maqams can be realized with either vocal or instrumental music, and do not include a rhythmic component. Al-Kindi (801–873 AD) was the first great theoretician of Arabic music. He proposed adding a fifth string to the oud and discussed the cosmological connotations of music. He surpassed the achievement of the Greek musicians in using the alphabetical annotation for one eighth. He published fifteen treatises on music theory, but only five have survived. In one of his treaties the word musiqa was used for the first time in Arabic, which today means music in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, English and several other languages in the Islamic world. Abulfaraj (897–967) wrote great book about music Kitab al-Aghani is an encyclopedic collection of poems and songs that runs to over 20 volumes in modern editions by the 8th/9th-century litterateur . Al-Farabi (872-950) wrote a notable book on music titled Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir (The Great Book of Music). His pure Arabian tone system is still used in Arabic music. Al-Ghazali (1059–1111) wrote a treatise on music in Persia which declared, 'Ecstasy means the state that comes from listening to music'. In 1252, Safi al-Din developed a unique form of musical notation, where rhythms were represented by geometric representation. A similar geometric representation would not appear in the Western world until 1987, when Kjell Gustafson published a method to represent a rhythm as a two-dimensional graph.
Al-AndalusMain article:
Andalusian classical musicBy the 11th century, Moorish Spain had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually throughout France, influencing French troubadours, and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, organ and naker are derived from Arabic oud, rabab, urghun and nagqara'.
A number of musical instruments used in classical music are believed to have been derived from Arabic musical instruments: the lute was derived from the Oud, the rebec (ancestor of violin) from the rebab, the guitar from qitara, which in turn was derived from the Persian Tar, naker from naqareh, adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) from al-tabl, atambal from al-tinbal,[7] the balaban, the castanet from kasatan, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments,[8] the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe),[9] the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,[10] the gaita from the ghaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya,[11] geige (violin) from ghichak,[12] and the theorbo from the tarab.[13] Whether these links between European instruments and Oriental instruments are more than etymological is not known but is likely to be nothing more than that.The music of the troubadors may have had some Arabic origins. Ezra Pound, in his Canto VIII, famously declared that William of Aquitaine, an early troubador, 'had brought the song up out of Spain / with the singers and veils..'. In his study, Lévi-Provençal is said to have found four Arabo-Hispanic verses nearly or completely recopied in William's manuscript. According to historic sources, William VIII, the father of William, brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners.[14] Trend admitted that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry from the Andalusian Muslims.[15] The hypothesis that the troubadour tradition was created, more or less, by William after his experience of Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain was also championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal in the early 20th-century, but its origins go back to the Cinquecento and Giammaria Barbieri (died 1575) and Juan Andrés (died 1822). Meg Bogin, English translator of the female troubadors, also held this hypothesis, as did Idries Shah. Certainly 'a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards.'[16]One possible theory on the origins of the Western Solfège musical notation suggests that it may have had Arabic origins. It has been argued that the Solfège syllables (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti) may have been derived from the syllables of the Arabic solmization system Durr-i-Mufassal ('Separated Pearls') (dal, ra, mim, fa, sad, lam). This origin theory was first proposed by Meninski in his Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalum (1680) and then by Laborde in his Essai sur la Musique Ancienne et Moderne (1780), while more recent supporters include Henry George Farmer[17] and Samuel D. Miller.[18]
Early Modern Music in Cairo
Male instrumentalists were condemned in a treatise in 9 CE. They were associated with perceived vices such as chess, love poetry, wine drinking and homosexuality. Many Persian treatises on music were burned by zealots. Following the invasion of Egypt, Napoleon commissioned reports on the state of Ottoman culture. Villoteau's account reveals that there were guilds of male instrumentalists, who played to male audiences, and 'learned females,' who sang and played for women. The instruments included the oud, the kanun (zither) and the ney (flute). By 1800, several instruments that were first encountered in Turkish military bands had been adopted into European classical orchestras: the piccolo, the cymbal and the kettle drum. The santur, a hammered dulcimer, was cultivated within Persian classical schools of music that can be traced back to the middle of 19 CE. There was no written notation for the santur until the 1970s. Everything was learned face-to-face .
Musicians in Aleppo, 18th century.
Twentieth century
Early Secular Formation
Musicians in Aleppo, 1915.
In the 20th century, Egypt was the first in a series of Arab countries to experience a sudden emergence of nationalism, as it became independent after 2000 years of foreign rule. Turkish music, popular during the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the region, was replaced by national music. Cairo became a center for musical innovation.One of the first female musicians to take a secular approach was Umm Kulthum quickly followed by Fairuz. Both have been extremely popular through the decades that followed and both are considered legends of Arabic music.
Musicians in Aleppo, 1915
Ottoman Islamic legal history
MA (2012), Islamic Law and Middle Eastern History, Columbia University
BA (2008), Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles
Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) Fellowship (2015-16)
Summer Language Study Grant, Institute of Turkish Studies (2014)
Dilyara’s interests are in Islamic legal history, specifically under the Ottomans. For her dissertation research, she plans to focus on criminal law in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire.
For her most recent papers see the News section of our website.
BA, Politics, UC Santa Cruz (2010)
Interests: Islamic Law, Ethics, Intellectual History, TechnologyMixmeister studio 7 7 serial key.
Re: What books to self-study Classical/Quranic Arabic, from beginner to advanced? I am doing the Madinah Arabic Books series at LQToronto. Very boring, but you learn a lot and it is very easy - the teacher does a very good job, but keeps repeating too many times. Almost finished book 2. Started the series like 2 months ago.
Mohamed’s primary research interests include Islamic Law and Ethics as they relate to emerging technology. He’s interested in studying how AI furthers, disrupts, or augments knowledge production and communal self-perception, as well as how it challenges existing legal and social norms within the Islamic legal and ethical tradition. Prior to joining the AIS program, Mohamed worked in senior roles in Marketing & Communications, designing and implementing cutting-edge technological solutions to raise millions for startup nonprofits that focus on humanitarian relief and sustainable development.
Islamic jurisprudence
BA (2015), Arabic and Islamic Studies (minors in Religion and Early Christianity), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Hajja Razia Sharif Sheikh Scholarship in Islamic Studies (April 2015)
Robert Hayden Humanities Award, Goldstein Prize (April 2015)
Center for the Education of Women Reicker Research Grant (April 2014)
Michigan Honors Travel Grant (March 2014)
Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies Award (April 2013)
Tesneem is interested in the development of Islamic jurisprudence and its evolution based on various cultures and societies. She is also interested in the canonization of Islamic legal sources and how the level of authority of key references has varied with contemporary challenges. She is particularly looking forward to analyzing the works of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah in order to understand his methodology of law in relation to his community.
Arabic poetry and literary criticism
MA (2015), Yale University
BA (2009), Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia
Hasan Alsulami is a Ph.D. candidate in Arabic and Islamic studies. His interests lie in modern and pre-modern Arabic literature, especially in the 17th/11th century. Before joining the department of Arabic and Islamic studies at Georgetown, he received his M.A. from Yale University, where he wrote a thesis on the modern reception of the Arabic poetic concept of ʿamūd al-shiʿr (the pillar of poetry). As an undergrad, he studied Arabic language and literature at Umm al-Qura University in Makkah where he also attended several traditional courses held at several masjids on Arabic grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Following recent scholarship which attempts to reread pre-modern Arabic and Islamic culture by its own right, and under the supervision of Dr. Suzanne Stetkevych, he is currently working on his dissertation on Arabic poetic aesthetics in the 17th/11th century. Through an examination of the major biographical dictionary Sulāfat al-ʿaṣr fī maḥāsin al-shuʿarā’ bi-kulli miṣr (The Purest Wine of The Present on The Merits of Poets in Every Region) of the Ḥijāzī scholar Ibn Maʿṣūm al-Madanī (d. 1709), Hasan is trying to investigate how poetic aesthetics (al-maqāyīs al- shiʿriyyah) developed from the Classical Period (Ibn Ṭabāṭabā, al-Jurjānī, Ibn Rashīq, etc.) to the Post- Classical Period. And to what extent Nahḍa (Arab awakening/renaissance) portrayed it.
Hasan presented papers on Saudi literature (2016), modern Arabic travelogue literature (2019) as well as received an appointment as a visiting fellow at King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh (2019/2020) as well as a Georgetown Dissertation Research Travel Grant.
Arabic and Islamic philosophy
BA, MA (2012), 1st Class with Honors, University of Cambridge
Summer FLAS Fellowship (2015)
Summer Language Study Grant, Institute of Turkish Studies (2015)
Middle Eastern Studies Dissertation Prize, University of Cambridge (2012)
Rosabel is writing her dissertation on tashkīk al-wujūd (the ambiguity of being) in Arabic philosophy where she explores the relationship between metaphysics and the philosophy of language. Her dissertation focusses on the genesis of tashkīk al-wujūd as a concept in Farabi and the Graeco-Arabic translation movement. Through this research she seeks to contextualize and further our understanding of tashkīk al-wujūd in Islamic philosophical writings of the post-classical period in which it would enjoy a renewed floresence. Additionally, Rosabel maintains a broad interest in the interactions between the falsafa tradition and Sufism, particularly the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī. For her most recent papers, see here.
Islamic Law, Contemporary Islamic Thought, Ijtihad and Reform in Contemporary Islam
MA (2016), Contemporary Muslim Thought and Societies, Summa cum laude, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar
MA (2011), Interdisciplinary Studies of Religions and Cultures, Summa cum laude, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy
BA (2004), Sociology, University of Tirana
Rezart Beka received B.A. in Sociology from University of Tirana in 2004. He obtained his first M.A. (with summa cum laude) in Interdisciplinary Studies of Religions and Cultures (with specialization in Christianity) from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy in 2011 and his second M.A. (with summa cum laude) in Contemporary Muslim Thought and Societies at Faculty of Islamic Studies (FIS) of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in Qatar, in 2016. He did intensive Arabic language courses at Diwan Center for Arabic Language in Cairo, Egypt in 2007-2008 and Qatar University in 2012-2013. His areas of interest include Islamic Law, Contemporary Islamic Thought, Ijtihad and Reform in Contemporary Islam, Theology and Social Sciences in Contemporary Islam, Interfaith Dialogue, Comparative Theology, and Theology of Religions.
Umayyad and Abbasid poetry and prose
MA (2008), Arabic Language and Literature, American University in Cairo
BA (1998), Arabic Language and Literature and Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
Cynthia holds an MA in Arabic Language and Literature with a specialization in classical Arabic literature from the American University in Cairo (2008) and a BA in Arabic Language and Literature with Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London (1998). In 2012, she began her matriculation at Georgetown. Cynthia has been a recipient of Title VI funding (2011), and her research interests include poetry and prose from the Umayyad and Abbasid periods with current emphasis on the invective of the Umayyad poet, Jarir. Cynthia also participated in the reading and translation of the modern Egyptian poet, Aml Dunqal at Intersections, a poetry reading event at Indiana University, in 2011. She has taught Arabic online since 2009 at the University of West Florida.
Cynthia’s recent talks include The 1st Millennium Network Conference on September 22, 2017 at The Catholic University where she presented a draft dissertation chapter entitled, “The Lyric Sword: An Aesthetics of Contest”, MESA where she presented in both 2016 and 2017, and presenting at the March 2019 ACLA conference at Georgetown University.
Her publications include: “Development Anthropology: A Primary Survey” and “Preliminary Findings of a Health and Education Survey” in R.W. Dutton, J.I. Clarke and A. Battikhi (eds.), Arid Land Resources and their Management: Jordan’s Desert Margin, Kegan Paul International Ltd., London, 1998 (repr. Routledge, 2009). Now available online through Routledge. For her most recent papers, see the News section of our website.
Hadith, Hadith Commentary, History of Early Islam, Companion Biography
MA (2018), History, Istanbul Sehir University, Turkey
BA (2016), with Highest Honors, Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
F.O. Kelsey Prize for Best Second Term Junior Paper (Spring, 2015) Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
Intensive Ottoman-Turkish (Summer, 2014) Istanbul Sciences Institute, Turkey
Intensive Arabic (Summer, 2013), Qasid Institute, Jordan
Ali Cebeci is interested in the formative period of the Islamic intellectual sciences. In particular, he studies the development of the hadith sciences and the role various types of hadith played in the growth of Islamic theology, jurisprudence and historiography. Additionally, he is interested in the history and historiography of early (i.e. 5th-7th century) Islam, and in particular, the portrayal of the Companions in classical Sunni historiography. He joined Georgetown University’s PhD program of Arabic & Islamic Studies in Fall, 2018.
Political theory, philosophy, Muslim political thought
MSc (2013), Political Theory, London School of Economics
MA (2012), Islamic Studies, University of Khartoum, Sudan
MEng (2008), with Honors, Systems Engineering, Loughborough University, UK
Mohammed’s primary research area is comparative political theory. His research interests also include modernity, Islamic law, political theology, Salafism, continental philosophy, and contemporary Muslim political thought. He holds an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MA in Islamic Studies from the University of Khartoum, and an MEng. (Hons) in Systems Engineering from Loughborough University. He has been at Georgetown since 2013.
BA (2012) Languages and Translation from Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt
MA (2019) Middle Eastern and North African Studies, The University of Arizona
Muhammad received his BA in Languages and Translation from Al-Azhar University in Cairo Egypt and his MA in Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. His interests include: Islamic Law, Contemporary Political Islam in Middle Eastern History, Codification of Islamic Law, Islamic Criminal Law, and Neo-Sufism
Classic and Modern Arabic poetry
MA (2017), English Literature, American University of Beirut
BA (2014), English Literature, American University of Beirut
Mohammad Fakhreddine is a PhD candidate with a concentration in Arabic Literature. He earned his BA and MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut (AUB). His Master’s Thesis focused on Modern Arabic Poetry, more specifically the stylistic and technical innovations of the Free Verse Movement in the 20th century. Mohammad’s areas of interest include Classical and Modern Arabic poetry, poetic stylistics and metrics, and Arabic language and identity.
Intellectual history, religious reform, gender
BA (2009), Middle East Languages and Culture, Columbia University
MSc (2011), with Distinction, Anthropology, London School of Economics
Awarded the Lucy Mair Prize for her MSc Dissertation, LSE (2011)
Marya’s interests include intellectual history, gender, and Islamic reform in the early 20th century Middle East and South Asia. Her work situates Afghanistan in the broader global transformations of the early 20th Century, examining regional solidarities and the flow of ideas beyond the framework of the nation-state. In addition to her doctoral work, she is an avid instagrammer, occasional freelancer, and organizer of the DC Palestinian Film & Arts Festival. She loves languages and reads Arabic, French, Farsi, and Urdu.
For her most recent papers, see the MESA section of our website.
Islamic Jurisprudence, Contemporary Qur’an Interpretation, Hadith Studies
Magister (2014) in German Literature, Philosophy and Islamic Studies, Tübingen University, Germany
Irene obtained her Magister Artium degree (German master’s degree) in Literature, Philosophy and Islamic Studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany and taught for the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) at the University of Alexandria, Egypt before she arrived at Georgetown. The dynamic between religion, law and politics has intrigued her since she first lived and worked in Egypt in 2004. She is particularly interested in contemporary pacifist Qur’an interpretation, the sharia compliancy of cryptocurrencies, and the canonization process of hadith collections. She has recently started to delve into computational analysis techniques such as Text Mining and Topic Modelling and is exploring the intersection between Islamic Studies and the Digital Humanities.
In addition to English and German, Irene reads French, Spanish, Latin, Arabic and Farsi.
Arabic music, poetry, and culture
MA (2013), Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (Arabic), Ohio State University
BA (2011), Linguistics and Arabic, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Georgetown Graduate Teaching Assistant Award in Humanities, Arabic (2014)
Nicholas joined the PhD program in 2013. He received his MA in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (Arabic) from the Ohio State University in 2013 and his BA in Linguistics and Arabic from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. His research interests are at the intersection of Arabic music, poetry, and culture. He has conducted research in cities throughout Egypt on the development of hip hop culture in the country. He is also interested in the use of traditional Arabic instruments in contemporary music.
He recently contributed a chapter on “Hip Hop and International Voices of Revolution: Egypt,” to the volume J. Bailey (ed.), Philosophy and Hip Hop: Ruminations on Postmodern Cultural Form, Palgrave Macmillan, NY, 2014, p. 103-117. For his most recent papers, see the News section of our website.
Arabic linguistics
MA (2012), Arabic Language, Literature and Linguistics, Georgetown University
BA (2000), Wellesley College
Karen’s research involves the syntax of Spoken Arabic, with a specialty in Tunisian Arabic. Her master’s thesis, on the aspectual use of the preposition fī, was published in 2017 as “Fī (‘in’) as a Marker of the Progressive Aspect in Tunisian Arabic” in Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects (U. of Zaragoza Press). She is currently working on a related piece on the use of marked negation (specifically, nominal negation of verbal sentences) as a marker of the progressive aspect in Tunisian. In these projects, she is concerned with describing previously neglected features of the language (which are often not found in other varieties of Arabic), as well as exploring the intersection of syntax and semantics.
In addition to linguistics, Karen is involved in literary translation and lexicography. She was lead revising editor of the Oxford Arabic Dictionary (2014), and her Arabic-to-English poetry and fiction translations have been published in Banipal, World Literature Today, and Al Jadeed. She is currently working on a translation of Inaya Jaber’s novel Nobody Gets Lost in Beirut.
Karen created the first large-scale corpus of Tunisian Arabic, which she has used in her own research and which is also available free to the public at tunisiya.org. For fun she likes baking, running, and coding things (like the corpus) in Python.
Karen recently attended the Sharjah WBC workshop on Arabic to English translation skills.
Personal website
Academia.edu page
Research website
Social and political movements, Islamic legal theory
MA (2013), Conflict Resolution, Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia
PhD Candidate (2011), Islamic Jurisprudence (Usūl al-Fiqh), Islamic Seminary of Qum, Iran
MA (2009), Islamic Jurisprudence (Usūl al-Fiqh), Islamic Seminary of Qum, Iran
Rasoul is a PhD candidate in Arabic and Islamic studies. Prior to joining the department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown, he spent several years at the Islamic seminary of Qum in Iran where he earned an MA in Islamic Jurisprudence. He is interested in Islamic legal theory as well as the contemporary social and political movements in the Islamic world.
Before joining the program, Rasoul had already published several titles in the field of Islamic studies:
- Contemporary Shia Jurisprudence: A Reader (al-Nusūs al-Fiqhīyah al-Mu‛asarah), Huzeh Khāharān Press, Qum (Iran), 2009 (in Arabic), a text book including selections from modern and contemporary thought in Shi‛a jurisprudence, that became a required textbook for graduate students in Shia women’s seminaries in Iran.
- By Gods, In Person (Bā Khodāyān Zamīn), Astan Quds Razavi Press, Mashhad (Iran), 2009. This book analyzes the definition and rulings connected to the notion of “paying allegiance to unjust monarchs,” analyzing this subject from the perspective of Shi‛a jurisprudence and Islamic tradition.
- Two Rakats Story (Du Raka’t Dāstān), Ketāb Āshnā Press, Tehran, 2008 (sold more than 100,000 copies). An adaptation of selected fatwas from Shi‛a jurists into 130 short stories for young adults.
Arabic and Islamic Philosophy
BA (2016), Summa Cum Laude, Philosophy, University of Dayton
The Rev. Charles C. Bloemer, S.M., Award of Excellence in Philosophy (2015)
The Rev. Charles Polichek First Award of Excellence in Philosophy (2016)
Eriko completed her undergraduate work at University of Dayton, Ohio where she studied philosophy from the ancient times to the 21th century. After graduation, she decided to pursue her study in Arabic and Islamic philosophy at Georgetown. She is interested in the transmission and adaptation of Greek knowledge, particularly that of Aristotelian philosophy, into Arabic.
Islamic law
MA (2015), Islamic Studies, Istanbul 29 Mayis University, Turkey
BA (2013), Divinity, Ankara University, Turkey
In her master’s thesis, Shar’u man qablanā in the uṣūl al-fiqh literature of the first five centuries (AH), Hatice surveyed the works of the scholars who studied shar‘u man qablanā, starting with the first printed uṣūl al-fiqh book and ending with some of the sixth century scholars, such as Al-Ghazālī, Ibn ‘Aqīl and Al-Kalwadhānī. She examined the early scholarly debates on whether shar‘u man qablanā could be referred to as a source of Islamic law.
During her doctoral studies, she would like to study the taxonomy of the sources of law revealed in the uṣūl al-fiqh works of the late Ottoman period, more specifically in the works of Ibn ‘Abidīn. Her areas of interest include the relationship of a legal concept with its social environment, the interaction between scholars of different madhhabs, and the interrelation between religious institutions and politics.
She is a native Turkish and French speaker, and studied Arabic at several universities and language institutes in Turkey and Egypt.
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BA (2017), Political Science and Arabic, Summa cum laude with highest honors, Tufts University
Peter Belfer Award for best senior thesis written (2017)
Arabic Language, Culture, and Literature Prize (2017)
Umar Shareef is a PhD candidate in Islamic studies since 2018. He received his BA from Tufts University in 2017 and studied in Jordan for a year afterwards. His research interests center around the intellectual, cultural, and legal history of the Arabo-Islamic world during the classical period with a focus on the emergence and development of jurisprudential principles after the fifth century.