@afzaque

Historian, PhD | Interests: Medieval Islam, late antiquity, Middle East & South Asia | Tweets: manuscripts, print culture, miscellanea

Joined July 2017
  • Tweets4K
  • Following374
  • Followers6.8K
579Media
The US has no idea what it's given birth to, does it? 😂
Mehmet@afgmehOct 14
Fun fact: Iran got this type of music now too. Instead of talking about 4 wheelers, beemers,and wearing Fila—they are talking about controlling the Straight of Hormuz and the Gulf.
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Gregory Elich@GregoryElichOct 10
Khatayi’s book is the most in-depth, sophisticated account of China’s government, society, and culture written by any foreigner before the era of European colonial empires. Now translated into English for the first time. cup.columbia.edu/book/the-bo…
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Shaiel Ben-Ephraim
@academic_laSep 24
"Should we commit genocide in Gaza?" "Do you think there are any innocents in Gaza?" The series of comedian Lior Schlein talking to the youth of Israel continues, and this time he hears why even babies are not innocent. The full scale Nazification of Israeli youth is truly shocking.
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Erica Stevens@erica_d_stevensSep 8
There's an important detail in the story: many of these writers are now employed as "AI humanizers," at a much lower pay rate, of course. If you read past the irony, the lesson of the story is a harbinger for almost all industries.
Trevor McKendrick
@TrevMcKendrickSep 7
"AI has destroyed Kenyan jobs because American college students no longer hire them to write fake college essays" is not a framing I expected even the NYT to have
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Stop the Forever Wars@DoctorFishbonesSep 8
All the scientists and math nerds were fine with OpenAI violating copyright by artists and only got up in arms when OpenAI stole the data on a math proof
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I wrote this in response to a prospective applicant whose email was at least partially AI-generated: Thank you for your email. Your project sounds interesting, but the problem is that there are sentences in your email that are composed by AI. 1/4
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This is a pretty incredible story! nytimes.com/2026/09/05/techn…

Kenyans Did College Students’ Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived.

Thousands of Kenyans made a living writing essays for overseas students. With A.I., the work has dried up, a warning for online gig work that has been a global lifeline.

nytimes.com
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Having worked on a research paper using a plethora of early modern print material available on Google Books in the 2010s but which then gradually disappeared over the years since, I feel like I've witnessed its evisceration in real time. Welcome to the digital dark ages!
Sam Haselby@samhaselbyAug 26
Almost 20 years ago, Robert Darnton, who was then head of the Harvard libraries, organized other university libraries to decline Google's request to digitize their books because they refused to guarantee public access in perpetuity. He was prescient.
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Emmett Stinson@EmmettStinsonAug 20
Academic feuds should only be conducted in the traditional way: weirdly passive aggressive footnotes in competing monographs over a period of multiple decades (whoever dies first loses).
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Arsalan Khan@akkhan81Aug 12
It’s not hard to understand that American liberalism vacillates between the idea that everyone is a unique individual and everyone represents a social, mostly racial, identity. Both lead to a kind of moralism that is incapable of addressing actual class or race inequalities.
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SherAli Tareen@SheraliTareenAug 6
Publication announcement: my third monograph "Shah Waliyullah Dihlavi: Aspirations and Tensions of Islamic Cosmopolitanism" out today. Though slightly shorter than my first two books, this is perhaps the best and was certainly the most meaningful to write. oneworld-publications.com/wo…

Shah Waliyullah Dihlavi | Oneworld

Shah Waliyullah Dihlavi (d. 1762) was a highly renowned and influential scholar of Islam who produced foundational works on the Qur’an, Islamic law and jurisprudence, Sufism, philosophy, and politi...

oneworld-publications.com
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JOB POST: Assistant Professor in Pre-Modern History of the Islamicate Middle East or Central Asia at @UChicago @NELC_UChicago. Salary $90,000-120,000. Deadline 19 October 2026. apply.interfolio.com/190288
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There's a brief chapter on "Homer in Islam" by Alberto Manguel in his survey work, "Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography" (2007). It mainly discusses the Abbasid translators, who did not work with Greek poetry though some tales of Troy were retold in medieval Arabic texts.
Kevin Blankinship د.كيڤن@AmericanMaghrebJul 31
How do you say “cyclops” in Arabic? (jumping on the Odyssey train!) 1/2 Medieval geographer al-Bakrī (d. 1094) reports that cannibals once lived on the isle of Sicily, among them “a race of monsters with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads, known as...
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Kevin's tweet answers precisely the question that occured to me upon coming across and leafing through Manguel's book at the library yesterday. Nice serendipity!
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Better yet: a properly historical note on the typeface, like this brief account of Garamond (found in the English edition of Han Kang's Greek Lessons, published by Hogarth in 2023).
Edward Howell
@TheEdwardHowellJul 27
Every book should have a note on the type, not least because it makes the crucial distinction between a typeface (correct) and a font (incorrect).
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Krista N. Dalton@KristaNDaltonJul 10
I'm thrilled to say that we are hiring a tenure track Assistant Professor of Religion in the Islam subfield at Denison University! Please share widely among your networks. apply.interfolio.com/188984
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Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwaldJun 29
One of the all-time most repulsive NYT headlines:
The New York Times
@nytimes10 Jul 2014
Missile at Beachside Gaza Cafe Finds Patrons Poised for World Cup nyti.ms/1nc1bnZ

In Rubble of Gaza Seaside Cafe, Hunt for Victims Who Had Come for Soccer (Published 2014)

At least eight people were killed by a missile, apparently targeting what Israel’s military later described as a single terrorist.

nytimes.com
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Duke University Press@DukePressJun 26
In "Ninety-Nine," Amira Mittermaier offers an intimate, kaleidoscopic portrait of Allah through ninety-nine short chapters based on interviews with over one hundred Egyptians about who God is to them. Read the preface of this book for free now. buff.ly/KnB1fD0
Cover of Ninety-Nine: A Kaleidoscopic Portrait of Allah by Amira Mittermaier. The cover features a flower like kaleidoscopic design made by the repetition of stylized Arabic scripts in a radial pattern in colors that range from yellow to orange to a berry red. The background is a deep purple brown. The title is written in white italics centered beneath. The subtitle is immediately below in orange. Directly below this is a decorative line separator and beneath this is the author’s name in a pale orange.

ALT Cover of Ninety-Nine: A Kaleidoscopic Portrait of Allah by Amira Mittermaier. The cover features a flower like kaleidoscopic design made by the repetition of stylized Arabic scripts in a radial pattern in colors that range from yellow to orange to a berry red. The background is a deep purple brown. The title is written in white italics centered beneath. The subtitle is immediately below in orange. Directly below this is a decorative line separator and beneath this is the author’s name in a pale orange.

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Notre Dame Press@UNDPressJun 15
Congratulations, @alialtafmian! ISLAMIC ETHICS AND SPIRITUAL SOVEREIGNTY is now available. This #NewBook is grounded in the vast textual #Archive one of modern South Asia's foremost #Muslim #Theologians and Sufis. #Genre #Sovereignty #SouthAsia #Ethics undpress.nd.edu/978026821091…
Cover for Mian’s "Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty." The full title and author’s name appear in a white box to the right of a painting of light and dark clouds and a dark blue sky. Accompanying text: "'Opens up new avenues, not only in the study of Islam and modernity, but in broader dimensions of comparative religions and cultures.' -Marcia Hermansen"

ALT Cover for Mian’s "Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty." The full title and author’s name appear in a white box to the right of a painting of light and dark clouds and a dark blue sky. Accompanying text: "'Opens up new avenues, not only in the study of Islam and modernity, but in broader dimensions of comparative religions and cultures.' -Marcia Hermansen"

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