Excited to be speaking at @UniofExeter's CGS Virtual Seminar Series on "Portuguese Black Serpents Meet Safavid Dragons: The Intellectual World of Indian Ocean Imperialism." 🐉🐍 Register here: universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

“We are fundamentally storytellers…. we live in a community of storytellers.” In the new Drafting the Past episode, Fahad Bishara talks dhows, Monsoon Voyagers, and how to write history as world‑making—from microhistory to an oceanic scale. Come listen 👇 draftingthepast.com/podcast-epis...

New Article: Fahad Bishara, “Markets of Doubt: Islamic Law and the Omani Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean, c. 1870.” Slavery & Abolition, 1–20. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

What if Sri Lanka’s Muslim past is best read through monsoon-route pilgrims & merchants—not empires? What shifts when Arabic, Tamil, Malay, Ottoman, Urdu, Dhivehi, and Sinhala sources meet for the first time in "Serendipitous Translations"?👂🏽to Nile Green: newbooksnetwork.com/serendipitou...

Join us at the "Water Ways: Epistemologies and Aesthetics" conference by @DohaInstitute Feb 18-20. I'll present "Dhows as Magical Infrastructures: Reinscribing the Occult in Indian Ocean History" Feb 20 at 12. Keynotes on Oceanic History & Ethnography by @TheNakhoda & @lalehkhalili.bsky.social

Is there a definitive Islamic ecumene? & How did the colonial period and subsequent postcolonial transitions shape the identity and practices of Muslim communities worldwide? I spoke to Eric Tagliacozzo about "Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies" on newbooksnetwork.com/islamic-ecum...

How has anti-blackness been historically depicted in Arabic writings, and what forms has it taken across diverse genres? Join me & Amir Al-Azraki, the translator of @NaderKadhim's groundbreaking book: "Africanism: Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary" on: newbooksnetwork.com/africanism

How does the seafarer's body become a battleground for power, tradition, and exploitation in the maritime world? Explore these complexities with @LalehKhalili
in her new captivating ethnography: "Corporeal Life of Seafaring" on @NewBooksNetwork
Podcast: newbooksnetwork.com/corporeal-li...

How can we study Indian Ocean connections through Arabic and Persian literary circles and texts? Tune in for a journey spanning Sanaa to Hyderabad, Isfahan to Bahrain in James White's: "Persian and Arabic Literary Communities in the Seventeenth Century" on
newbooksnetwork.com/persian-and-...