About

Michal Biran is the Max and Sophie Mydans Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a member of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities. Since October 2021, she has served as head of the Institute of Asian and African Study at HUJI.  She is a historian of Inner Asia, imperial China and the medieval Islamic world. She teaches in the departments of Asian Studies and Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Biran has published extensively on the Mongol Empire, Mongol and pre-Mongol Central Asia (especially the Qara Khitai and the Chaghadaids), cross-cultural contacts between China, nomadic empires and the Muslim world, comparative study of empires, nomadic culture, migrations and mobility, and Ilkhanid Baghdad. 

Prof. Biran has authored or edited 12 books and volumes and authored dozens of articles. She has recently completed editing The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire along with Hodong Kim (2 vols. forthcoming 2022).

Selected Publications

1. Michal Biran. Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Presss, 1997. (Kindle edition 2013; Reprint: London: Routledge 2016).

2. Michal Biran. The Qara Khitai Empire in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, 2008.

3. Michal Biran. Chinggis Khan. (“The Makers of the Muslim World”). Oxford: OneWorld Publications, 2007 (Kindle edition 2012; Mongolian translation 2015; Turkish translation 2019).

4. Michal Biran, ed. Mobility and Transformation: Cultural Exchange in Mongol Eurasia Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient  62: 2-3 (2019).

5. Michal Biran, Jonathan Brack and Francesca Fiaschetti, eds. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, Intellectuals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020. (Korean translation 2021).

Selected Awards

      2021-           Corresponding Member, The Austrian Academy of Sciences

2009, 2013, 2015     Excellent Teaching Award, HUJI

2014-          Fellow, The Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities

2014           The Klachky Prize for the Advancement of the Frontiers of Science, HUJI 

2012-2017 The Anneliese Maier Research Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Asian Studies)

2007           The Landau Prize for Research and Sciences (History of East Asia and Its Cultures)

2006-9 -      The Michael Bruno Prize, The Rothschild Foundation (Middle Eastern Studies) {frozen 2007-2011 for personal reasons}

2004-5         The Yoram Ben-Porat Presidential Prize for Excelling Young Researcher, HUJI.

Teaching

Courses taught in the last 5 years (B.A., M.A.)

BA Courses (last 5 years):

Introduction to the History and Culture of Late Imperial China (906-1911) (Lesson, EAS).

The Silk Roads: Asia and the Muslim World in the Pre-Modern Era (Seminar, ME)

Between China and the Mideast: Issues in Central Asian History (Seminar, ME and  EAS).

The Mongols in the Islamic World (Seminar, ME).

Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pre-Modern Muslim World (BA seminar, ME)

Honors Program in Chinese Studies (with Yuri Pines and Orna Naftali/ Gideon Shelach and Yuri Pines) (EAS)

MA Courses (last 5 years):

Mobility and Transformation in Mongol Eurasia (ERC seminar 2015, 2017).

Silk Roads Encounters in North West China (Touring course in NW China, with Yuri Pines and Gideon Shelach, summer 2017, EAS)

 Eurasian Nomads in World History (ME, with Michael Shenkar 2019-20)

Issues in Ilkhanid History: The Mongols in Greater Iran (ME, 2021).

About

Lecturer, Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Institute for Asian and African Studies

Selected Publications

Islam and Salvation in Palestine (Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center, 2001), 180 pp.

Identity Politics in the Middle East: Liberal Thought and Islamic Challenge in Egypt (London: I.B. Tauris, March 2007), 270 pp.

Ulama, Politics and the Public Sphere: An Egyptian Perspective (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2010), 244 pp.

Martyrdom in Modern Islam: Piety, Power and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 276 pp.

Arab Liberal Thought in the Modern Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 272 pp.

Selected Awards

The Golda Meir Fellowship Fund, 2006

Competitive grants: ISF (2003-2005, 2007-2010, 2013-2016, 2019-2022)

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

Egypt in the Modern Era

Religion and State in the Middle East

Protest and Revolution in Modern Islam: A Comparative Perspective

Religious Culture Contested: Sufism in Modern Times

Ulama, Sufis and the Challenges of Modernity

On Sacrifice and Death in Modern Islam: A Comparative Perspective

Arab Liberalism: Intellectual and Political History

Speaking Truth to Power: Intellectuals and Revolution in the Middle East

Between the Madrasa and the Market: Religious Knowledge and Chrisma in Modern Islam

Introduction to the Modern Middle East

The Muslim Brotherhood: A Modern Mass Movement

Modern Arabic Thought: Selected themes

Palestinian Islam

Global Jihad in Historical Perspective: Thought, Politics and Violence

Islamic Protestanism: An Unfinished Project?

Revolution and Society: Marginal People in Egyptian Cinema, 1952-1970

Master's degree courses

Continuity and Change in Sufi Culture: Selected Issues (together with Prof. Sara Sviri, Department of Arabic Language and Literature)

Theology and Power in the Middle East: Method and History

Liberal Thought in Egypt

Critical Arab Thought: Selected Essays

Methodological Approaches in the Study of Islam and the Middle East

Martyrdom in Medieval Islamic Thought

Zionism and Israel in the Arab Liberal Thought

Nineteenth-Century Salafiyya and Enlightenment

Autobiographies as a Historical Source in the Study of Modern Arab Culture

Historical Myths and Modern Politics

About

Prof. Shaham's general field is Islamic legal history (mainly modern). He has published extensively on the Sharia courts and qadis in modern Egypt, Egyptian family law reform, the legal status of non-Muslims in modern Islamic societies, the ʿulamaʾ and reform in the modern period and Islamic law in Israel.

Selected Publications

Family and the Courts in Modern Egypt (Brill, 1997)

The Expert Witness in Islamic Courts: Medicine and Crafts in the Service of Law (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

Rethinking Islamic Legal Modernism: the Teaching of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (Brill, 2018)

Editor of Law, Custom and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish (Brill, 2007)

Selected Awards

1988 DAAD (West-Germany), for research in Tubingen

Lady Davis post-doctoral fellowship

Fulbright post-doctoral scholarship

The Golda Meir Fellowship

2009  Fulbright Specialist Program; selected to spend one month at Central Lakes College, Brainerd, Minnesota

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

Introduction to Islamic Law

Islam and the State (B.A. seminar)

The Family in Modern Islamic Societies (Textual Course in Arabic)

The Modernists in Islam (Textual Course in Arabic)

Readings in Modern Legal Opinions (Fatwas)

Islamic Law in the State of Israel (Textual Course in Arabic) 

Master's degree courses

Islam and the State (M.A. seminar in English)

Islamic Attitudes to Other Religions and to Israel (Textual Course in Arabic)

The Inheritance System in Islamic Societies (Textual Course in Arabic)