This seminar will begin at 5pm in the Centre's Jerusalem Room. Prior booking is not required. All welcome.

Tahera Qutbuddin is AlBabtain Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford. Originally from Mumbai, she earned a BA and Tamhidi Magister from Ain Shams University, Cairo, and a PhD from Harvard; she taught for twenty years at the University of Chicago. Her scholarship on classical Arabic literature and Islam has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Author of two monographs, Arabic Oration: Art and Function (Brill 2019, Sheikh Zayed Book Award winner), and Al-Mu’ayyad al-Shirazi and Fatimid Da’wa Poetry (Brill 2005), she has also published two edition-translation volumes on ethical sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, Light in the Heavens (NYU 2016), and of Imam Ali, A Treasury of Virtues (NYU 2013), and numerous scholarly articles including “Arabic in India.” Her latest book, Nahj al-Balaghah: The Wisdom and Eloquence of Ali, is forthcoming with Brill in 2024.