Michael Payne
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mlawrencepayne.bsky.social
Michael Payne
@mlawrencepayne.bsky.social
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Translator and historian | PhD from Brown University | Writing about al-Jāḥiẓ, animals, race, and enslavement | Interested in early Islam and late antique Christianity.

https://www.mlawrencepayne.com
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Reposted by Michael Payne
arablit.bsky.social
Towering Egyptian Novelist Sonallah Ibrahim Dies at 88

Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim -- one of the great literary innovators of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries -- died today, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture announced. He was eighty-eight.
Towering Egyptian Novelist Sonallah Ibrahim Dies at 88
Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim -- one of the great literary innovators of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries -- died today, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture announced. He was eighty-eight.
arablit.org
August 13, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Reposted by Michael Payne
jparkesallen.bsky.social
Loving the distinctive script and hand style of this 10th c. (probably) parchment (!) page from a fragmentary majmū'a of Christian Arabic texts, with the text featured here being Ṣaḥīfa nazalat min as-samāʾ, an exemplar of the ubiquitious pre-modern "letter from heaven" genre (BSB cod.arab. 1067)
May 16, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Michael Payne
chehayebk.bsky.social
Brilliant by @justinsalhani.bsky.social, who wrote about his father, an award-winning photojournalist, on the 50-year anniversary of Lebanon’s civil war

www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025...
Lebanese Civil War began 50 years ago. Here’s how one photographer saw it
Award-winning photojournalist Claude Salhani documented his country’s war for nine years, until he had to turn away.
www.aljazeera.com
April 14, 2025 at 9:02 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
monicamedhist.bsky.social
#MedievalSky An event of importance for #GlobalMiddleAges studies. On March 5, Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is sponsoring a talk on slave-taking in early medieval Rus'. Sign up here: macmillan.yale.edu/glc/events/2...
GLC@Lunch with Chris Halsted: “Systems of Slave-Taking and Slavic Ethnogenesis in Early Medieval Rus’”
Wed, Mar 5 2025, 12 - 1:15pm | Chris Halsted (GLC Visiting Scholar) The spread of Slavic identity within early medieval Rus’ remains poorly understood, with most models privileging some manner of expl...
macmillan.yale.edu
February 27, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Michael Payne
emuehlbe.bsky.social
Coming soon!
Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World---from @ucpress.bsky.social
A book cover: the art has a squatty wide mouth Roman glass jar from the Cleveland Art Museum at the lower half center. It is shot from an mildly overhead angle so you can see a little into the jar. The jar is mostly covered in shiny gold leaf, but it also has iridescent brighter color variations in the surface: a pinky-orange, a little green, and spot of striking teal. The jar is backlit, such that in front of it lie two shadows, one umbra and one penumbra. All of this is on a slightly soft white background. Then, my name is across the top in a green that matches the jar's green; the subtitle is at the foot of the image, in a reddish orange that picks up the jar's orange sheen, and---most stunning---the title, Things Unseen, is in a medium light blue that echoes the edge of the teal spot on the jar, and, get this, it is slightly tucked in to the opening of the jar, so that "Things" is fully on the white background but "Unseen" is stacked directly below it and only just the top tips of the letters are on the white, while the mid letters are against the interior of the jar, and the very bottom edge of the letters in "Unseen" is tucked into the jar and thus obscured. The effect is that the title appears to rise out of the jar! And, as you inspect it, it draws attention to a slight chip and crack on the left side of the opening of the jar. Tl;dr the University of California Press designer absolutely slayed
February 6, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Upcoming lecture:
The Black Death: Why We’ve Never Known Its True Causes or Extent Before -- "Shouldn’t we already know everything about this deadliest of pandemics?"
5:00 p.m. Wednesday, February 19th
Dallas Hall 306, McCord Auditorium
Southern Methodist University
#MedievalSky #PandemicHistories 🧪
The poster for a talk being held at Southern Methodist University on 19 February 2025. Above the text announcing the talk (see post) is an image of a busy cemetery scene, with people carrying and burying multiple coffins. It is one of the few contemporary images we have of the Black Death.
February 3, 2025 at 4:51 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
histphilosophy.bsky.social
The new, open access volume of the "Heirs of Avicenna" sourcebook series is out! About 600 pages of translated material on later Islamic logic and epistemology!

brill.com/display/titl...

You can see all the original texts for this and the first volume here:

www.heirsofavicenna.net

#philsky
The Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East, 12–13th Centuries
"The Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East, 12–13th Centuries" published on 27 Jan 2025 by Brill.
brill.com
January 31, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Reposted by Michael Payne
monicamedhist.bsky.social
My #WorldLeprosyDay essay has just dropped. My theme this year: seeing leprosy's globalization during the Middle Ages as a slow pandemic. As w/ all of my infectious disease historical work, combining traditional history, bioarchaeology, and genetics transforms what's possible. #histmed 🧪
George Thin's 1891 global map of leprosy.
January 26, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Michael Payne
zareenagrewal.bsky.social
#Postdoc in Palestine Studies at Yale MES for scholars of the history, society, politics, language, culture of Palestinians and the broader study of the Middle East. Prefer candidates whose research focuses on the early modern or modern period.

Please share widely!

apply.interfolio.com/161627
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
January 14, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Reposted by Michael Payne
jacculturelmu.bsky.social
Come to Munich and work with us as a fellow in our new programme "From Pre-Modern to Modern Perspectives in Judaic Studies":
jacculturelmu.bsky.social Munich Research Centre for Jewish-Arabic Cultures @jacculturelmu.bsky.social · Jan 8
We're delighted to announce a new fellowship programme and invite applications from scholars researching Judaism and the Jewish communities of the Near and Middle East from the early modern to modern periods. More info:
www.jewisharabiccultures.fak12.uni-muenchen.de/volkswagen-m...
Fellowship “From Pre-Modern to Modern Perspectives in Judaic Studies” – Munich Research Centre
www.jewisharabiccultures.fak12.uni-muenchen.de
January 13, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
gga-hagen.bsky.social
Wir wünschen allen ein frohes und produktives neues Jahr 2025! 🎆 Damit dies gelinge, gleich ein Buch — spannend für #modul25204 im #bakuwi und vor allem #modul26204 & #modul26206 im #mage #ggahagen ‼️
January 1, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
mesa1966.bsky.social
#Employment The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Middle Eastern Studies Forum at Stanford Global Studies invite qualified candidates to apply for the inaugural Palestinian Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship.

mesana.org/resources-an...
Middle East Studies Association
The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Middle Eastern Studies Forum at Stanford Global Studies invite qualified candidates to apply for the inaugural Palestinian Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship...
mesana.org
December 20, 2024 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by Michael Payne
rabihalameddine.bsky.social
A photo I posted of graffiti in Syria in 2014.
"One day the war will be over and I will return to my poem"
I hope they will return to their poem
December 8, 2024 at 2:51 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
medievalqabq.bsky.social
new exhibit on Madinat al-Zahra, once a capital of Umayyad Spain. the exhibit is free to the public at ISAW in New York. 🧵w/ just a few favorites:

[shown here: limestone inscription from the Friday mosque, 333AH/944-5CE: "Abd al-Rahman Commander of the Faithful, may God grant him a long life"]
Museum label that reads "the rise and fall of an Islamic capital." under it are fragments of an inscription in Arabic that reads "Abd al-Rahman, Commander of the Faithful, may God grant him a long life."
December 6, 2024 at 3:55 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
mohamadelchamaa.bsky.social
Aleppo has long been home to one of Syria’s largest and most vibrant Christian communities.

@joesnellreports.bsky.social and I spoke to a number of Christians there about their current situation and how they see their future after the HTS capture of the city
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/1...
Christians in Aleppo fear for their future after Islamist takeover
Though the rebels, once affiliated with al-Qaeda, have sought to soften their image in recent years, many worry they will revert to their repressive roots.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 6, 2024 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
rebellionuhh.bsky.social
'Was the Zanj Rebellion a 'Slave Revolt?'
Delighted to resume our lecture series next Tues, 10 Dec, 4:00 pm CET on Zoom. Philip Grant (University of California, Irvine) will present his research on the famous Zanj revolt in 9th-century Iraq. To register, simply email score.aai@uni-hamburg.de. 👇
December 4, 2024 at 10:52 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
arablit.bsky.social
This looks incredible; looks like it will be available from @mcsweeneys.net Dec. 12. Pre-order here:

store.mcsweeneys.net/products/mcs...
December 4, 2024 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
arablit.bsky.social
Banipal Translation Prize Announces 2024’s 6-book Shortlist
arablit.org/2024/12/02/b...
December 2, 2024 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
homophonous.bsky.social
“UCL Press is delighted to announce the publication of a new open access book: Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic by Assaf Bar-Moshe. Download it free: ow.ly/e4jy50UhkY2 “
Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic was the native tongue spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Southern Iraq, historically one of the oldest and biggest Jewish communities. This textbook is dedicated to spoken Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic and is designed to guide beginners to an advanced level, with the goal of enabling basic conversations. It focuses on common expressions of this unique dialect and opens a window to Baghdad's historic Jewish culture. The 10 lessons guide readers through a particular topic, such as greetings, family, shopping or cuisine, and consist of sample texts, key vocabulary, grammar points and exercises.
December 2, 2024 at 5:02 AM
Reposted by Michael Payne
visithmml.bsky.social
HMML preserves three copies of a very famous history of doctors by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʻah (d. 1269/1270 CE), in the collections of the Austrian National Library (22803), Universität Tübingen in Germany (42212), and St. Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem (SMMJ 00237, pictured): www.vhmml.org/readingRoom/...
Manuscript in the collection of St. Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem (SMMJ 00237). Opening page of a manuscript in the collection of St. Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem (SMMJ 00237).
November 25, 2024 at 4:53 PM