Dr Fouzia Farooq Ahmed is the Atlas Research Fellow at the Centre. Her work focuses on political authority, socio-religious institutions, and intellectual traditions of the Delhi Sultanate, employing textual analysis alongside examinations of historical memory and pedagogy. Previously she has taught as Associate Professor in the Department of History at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. In 2024–205 Dr Ahmed held the TORCH Global South Asia Visiting Professorship at All Souls College, Oxford.

Her research has been supported by grants including SEPHIS funding for alternative methodologies (2009) and University Research Fund awards for projects on Sultan Balban's governance (2011) and the Fathnama-i-Lakhnawti (2017). She has supervised numerous graduate students and founded Mehfil-i-Ilm w Tahqiq, an online forum for historical discourse. 

She received her MPhil and then her PhD from Quaid-i-Azam University.

Selected Publications

Book
Muslim Rule in Medieval India: Power and Religion in the Delhi Sultanate. London: I.B. Tauris, 2016.

Journal Articles

‘ʿUlamāʾ and Politics during the Khalji Period (690/1290-721/1321)’, FUW Journal of Social Sciences 16, no. 1 (2022).

‘ʿUlamāʾ and Politics during the Tughluq Period (721/1321-801/1399)’, Journal of Historical Studies, (2021).

‘The Components of Hindawi Language in Amir Khusraw's Poetry’, Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, (2021).

‘ʿUlamāʾ during the Power Shifts in the Delhi Sultanate: A Study of Ilbari Rule’, Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, 58.2 (2021).

‘Femininity, Power, Resistance and Politics of Outrage: The Legend of Padmavati’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society (2020).

‘Female Slaves in the Historiography of the Delhi Sultanate’, Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan, 57.2 (2020).

‘Practices of Diplomacy under the Mughals c.1526-1707’, FUW Journal of Social Sciences, 14.2 (2020).

‘Trust Based Relations in Delhi Sultanate Power Politics’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, 1 (2019).

‘Sultan Balban's Fatḥnāmah of Lakhnawtī in Iʻjaz-i-Khusrūī: An Official Document or A Work of Inshāʼ?’, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, 4 (2017).

‘Slavery as a Social Reality in the Early Muslim State: Injunctions, Codification and Rationale.’ Hamdard Islamicus, 2 (2013).

‘Delhi Sultanate: A Slave Society or Society with Slaves?’ Pakistan Journal for Historical and Cultural Research, 30.1 (2009): 1-24.