As an anthropologist and social historian I am interested in how human societies articulate, represent and perform understandings of self, community and other. My research focuses on Muslim societies in a range of historical and contemporary contexts. I am particularly concerned with the diverse ways in which Muslims express and articulate issues of deep human concern as well as matters of daily life. I also interrogate knowledge produced about Muslims, by academics and others. My research interests have lead me to study a range of issues including the production and performance of identity, the role of cultural workers and social movements, the dynamics of family networks and inter-generational migration, the socio-legal formation of communal identity in colonial contexts, and form and context of urban violence in religiously plural societies. I have conducted archival research and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in various parts of the world including East Africa, South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe and North America. I disseminate my research through books and articles for academic and non-academic audiences as well as film and exhibitions.
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Degrees
DPhil, University of Oxford, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2002
MPhil, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Department of Islamic Studies, 1997
BA (Joint Honours), McGill University, Faculty of Arts, Departments of Religious Studies and Anthropology, 1989
Appointments
Faculty of Graduate Studies
Professional Leadership
Coordinator, Individualized Studies (2019-2024)
Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Ismaili Studies (2017-2018)
York Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto (2015-2016)
Graduate Program Director, Social Anthropology, York University (2014-2016)
Associate Professor, Graduate Program, Social Anthropology, York University (2010-Present)
Associate Professor, Anthropology, York University (2010-Present)
Community Contributions
Curator, Memories of Stone: Landscapes of Prayer, Death, and Commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Site-specific exhibition of texts, textile art, and photographs. (Ismaili Centre Toronto, February 10-April 23, 2017).
Curator, Sensational Words: Power, Beauty and Ephemeral Nature of Words in the Digital Age. Three site-specific art installations and two public lectures. Major Institutions Project, Nuit Blanche Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, Aga Khan Park & Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, October 1, 2016).
Co-Curator (with Faisal Anwar). CharBagh: A Sensory Garden. Site-specific art installation. Independent Project, Nuit Blanche Festival (Aga Khan Park & Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, October 1, 2016).
Curator, Transformations: Enlightenment in a Digital Age. Four site-specific art installations featuring the work of Faisal Anwar, Fareena Chanda, Jamelie Hassan, and Ali Kazimi. (Ismaili Centre Toronto, September 1-December 31, 2016).
Curator, Our Stories, Our Images, Our Futures: Photographs made by Youth from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Hyderabad, and Toronto. Site-specific photographic exhibition. Independent Project, CONTACT Photography Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, April 30-July 31, 2016).
Research Interests
Anthropology, History, Material Culture, Visual Anthropology, Islam & Muslim Societies,
Indian Ocean & East Africa
York Massey Fellowship - 2024-25
York Fellowship Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies - 2015-16
Approaches to the Qur'an in Sub-Saharan Africa. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198840770. Covering a period from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century, this multidisciplinary volume examines Muslim engagements with the Qur'an in a variety of geographical locations in sub-Saharan Africa including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania. The volume's twelve case studies use different frameworks and methodological approaches from the academic disciplines of philology, historiography, anthropology, and art history. These studies explore a variety of media and modalities that Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, as elsewhere, use in their engagements with the Qur'an. These include: manuscripts; commentaries; translations; recitations and invocations; music and poetry; magical squares and symbolic repertoire; medicinal and curative acts; textiles, ink, paper, and wooden boards; spaces of education, healing and prayer, as well as spaces of dreams and spirit worlds. As such, the case studies move well beyond the materiality of the Qur'an as a physical book to explore the ways in which the Qur'an is understood, felt and imagined, as well as the contestations and debates that arise from these diverse engagements.
2019
Islam: An Illustrated Journey. Farhad Daftary and Zulfikar Hirji. 2018. Azimuth Editions in Association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies. ISBN: 1898592357. Beginning in the world of late antiquity and the pre-Islamic period, the book takes the reader through Islam’s formative era and early development in the Arabian Peninsula, the rise and decline of major Muslim dynasties and finally into its place in the modern world.
Lavishly illustrated and written in an accessible style, Islam: An Illustrated Journey tells the story of Islam, a faith that is today practised by more than a billion people and is the fastest growing religion in the world.
The book contains a multitude of images, graphics, maps and charts, features many of the masterpieces of art, architecture and literature produced by Muslims along with an easy-to-use glossary and a detailed bibliography that will appeal to both general audiences and enthusiasts of Islamic societies and cultures and world civilizations.
2018
Between Empires: Sheikh-Sir Mbarak al-Hinawy (1896-1959). Azimuth Editions. 2012. ISBN: 1898592099. An illustrated biography of one of the most famous governors of the East African coast. This scholarly publication uses numerous photographs and is based on newly discovered family archives and other primary sources. It also explores the growth and development of Mombasa from the 19th century up to the 1950s, its Arab and Swahili communities, and its unique cosmopolitain culture.
2012
Diversity and Pluralism in Islam and Muslim Contexts: Historical and Contemporary Discourses amongst Muslims I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2010 ISBN: 9781848853027 For more than fourteen hundred years Muslims have held multiple and diverging views about their religious tradition. This divergence encompasses such matters as authority; ritual practice; political power; law and governance; civic life; and the form and content of individual and communal expressions of their faith. Over the centuries Muslims have regularly debated these issues amongst themselves. However, despite the remarkable diversity of the Islamic tradition, and the plurality of understandings about Islam, Muslims are regularly and erroneously portrayed as internally homogeneous and dogmatic. This important book challenges such propositions by examining the ways in which matters of common concern to Muslims have been discussed by them and examined. The volume explores the processes by which Muslims construct notions of the self, the other and community, and addresses the socio-cultural tools that they employ in so doing. Offering contributions by world-class scholars, "Diversity and Pluralism in Islam" applies insights from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, political theory, comparative literature and Islamic studies.
2010
The Ismailis: An Illustrated History. Azimuth Editions in Association with Institute of Ismaili Studies. 2008. ISBN-10: 1898592268. Farhad Daftary and Zulfikar Hirji. This book contains some 400 images of manuscripts, artifacts and monuments, community documents as well as important historical and contemporary photographs. Based on modern scholarship in the fields of Ismaili and Islamic Studies, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible account of Ismaili history and intellectual achievements, set in the wider contexts of Islamic and world history.
2008
Book Chapters
Publication
Year
‘Architects of Time: Coloniality, Clocktowers, and Calendars on the East African Coast,’ in Architectures of Colonialism: Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories, ed., V. Egbers, C. Kamleithner, Ö. Sezer, and
A. Skedzuhn-Safir, De Gruyter-Birkhäuser (Basle, Germany), 59–75
2024
Co-authored with P. Bentley, “The Dialogic Exhibition,” in Canadian Contributions to the Study of Islamic Art and Archaeology, M. Milwright & E. Baboula (eds.), McGill-Queen’s University Press (Montreal, Canada). pp. 351-75. 24 pages.
2022
“The Siyu Qur’ans: Illuminated Qur’an Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa,” in Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa, Z. Hirji (ed.), Oxford University Press (Oxford, UK), pp. 431-72. 41 pages
2019
Journal Articles
Publication
Year
A Corpus of Illuminated Qur’ans from Coastal East Africa, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 14:2-4, 2023, 356-395.
This article examines a little-known corpus of illuminated Qurʾān manuscripts that were produced between ca. 1750–ca. 1850 in the Swahili city-states of Pate, Siyu, and Faza on Pate Island in the Lamu archipelago (Kenya). Now dispersed in collections in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman, the UK, and the USA, the manuscripts have many distinctive features: decorative frontispieces, sūra titles, basmalas, and division and prostration markers; locally developed Arabic script styles; colophons containing names of copyists and completion dates; endowment dedications; northern Italian-made paper; and, blind-stamped, leather covers. The list of known manuscripts presented in the appendix is aimed at encouraging the identification, digitization, and study of other manuscripts in the corpus. The study of their content, materiality, and contexts of production can advance scholarship on the histories of Islamic manuscript production in coastal East Africa and provide comparative material for manuscript studies in other regions of Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.
2023
The Faza Qur'an: Three Nineteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa, Journal of Qur'anic Studies, 2022, 24:2, 21-47.
This article concerns three illuminated Qur’an manuscripts that were produced in coastal East Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century. Two of the manuscripts are currently located in collections in Oman and the third is in a collection in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Analysis shows that these manuscripts comprise three parts of a four-part Qur’an that was copied by ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿUmar al-Nawfalī (d. 1274/1857) in Faza, a town located on Pate Island in the Lamu archipelago in Kenya. The article describes the three Faza manuscripts and, using colophon evidence and external sources, situates the copyist and the manuscripts in their historical context. The article also provides a summary of the academic study of illuminated Qur’an manuscripts from coastal East Africa to date and provides a list of these manuscripts.
2022
Creative Works
Publication
Year
Exhibition: Memories of Stone: Landscapes of Prayer, Death and Commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Site-specific exhibition of texts, textile art and photographs. (Ismaili Centre Toronto, February 10-April 23).
2017
Exhibition: Our Stories, Our Images, Our Futures: Photographs made by Youth from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Hyderabad and Toronto. Site-specific photographic exhibition. Independent Project, CONTACT Photography Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, April 30-July 31).
2016
Exhibition: Sensational Words: Power, Beauty and Ephemeral Nature of Words in the Digital Age. Three site-specific art installations and two public lectures. Major Institutions Project, Nuit Blanche Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, Aga Khan Park & Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, October 1).
2016
Exhibition: Transformations: Enlightenment in a Digital Age. Four site-specific art installations (Ismaili Centre Toronto, September 1-December 31).
2016
Exhibition: Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan, Photographs by Margaret Morton. Site-specific photographic exhibition (Ismaili Centre Toronto, May 9-July 30).
2015
Exhibition: Connect, Create, Cairo: Build a City with History & Technology. Site-specific community engagement exhibition & Workshops (Ismaili Centre Toronto, November 15- February 28).
2014
Public Lectures
Publication
Year
ISLAM : MULTIPLE HISTORIES
2019
Islamic Arts : Multiple Histories, Multiple Expressions
2019
Other
Publication
Year
To humanize Muslims, let’s start in the classroom
2019
Upcoming Courses
Term
Course Number
Section
Title
Type
Summer 2025
AP/ANTH2130 6.0
A
Anthropology Through The Visual
ONLN
As an anthropologist and social historian I am interested in how human societies articulate, represent and perform understandings of self, community and other. My research focuses on Muslim societies in a range of historical and contemporary contexts. I am particularly concerned with the diverse ways in which Muslims express and articulate issues of deep human concern as well as matters of daily life. I also interrogate knowledge produced about Muslims, by academics and others. My research interests have lead me to study a range of issues including the production and performance of identity, the role of cultural workers and social movements, the dynamics of family networks and inter-generational migration, the socio-legal formation of communal identity in colonial contexts, and form and context of urban violence in religiously plural societies. I have conducted archival research and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in various parts of the world including East Africa, South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe and North America. I disseminate my research through books and articles for academic and non-academic audiences as well as film and exhibitions.
Degrees
DPhil, University of Oxford, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2002
MPhil, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Department of Islamic Studies, 1997
BA (Joint Honours), McGill University, Faculty of Arts, Departments of Religious Studies and Anthropology, 1989
Appointments
Faculty of Graduate Studies
Professional Leadership
Coordinator, Individualized Studies (2019-2024)
Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Ismaili Studies (2017-2018)
York Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto (2015-2016)
Graduate Program Director, Social Anthropology, York University (2014-2016)
Associate Professor, Graduate Program, Social Anthropology, York University (2010-Present)
Associate Professor, Anthropology, York University (2010-Present)
Community Contributions
Curator, Memories of Stone: Landscapes of Prayer, Death, and Commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Site-specific exhibition of texts, textile art, and photographs. (Ismaili Centre Toronto, February 10-April 23, 2017).
Curator, Sensational Words: Power, Beauty and Ephemeral Nature of Words in the Digital Age. Three site-specific art installations and two public lectures. Major Institutions Project, Nuit Blanche Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, Aga Khan Park & Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, October 1, 2016).
Co-Curator (with Faisal Anwar). CharBagh: A Sensory Garden. Site-specific art installation. Independent Project, Nuit Blanche Festival (Aga Khan Park & Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, October 1, 2016).
Curator, Transformations: Enlightenment in a Digital Age. Four site-specific art installations featuring the work of Faisal Anwar, Fareena Chanda, Jamelie Hassan, and Ali Kazimi. (Ismaili Centre Toronto, September 1-December 31, 2016).
Curator, Our Stories, Our Images, Our Futures: Photographs made by Youth from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Hyderabad, and Toronto. Site-specific photographic exhibition. Independent Project, CONTACT Photography Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, April 30-July 31, 2016).
Research Interests
Anthropology, History, Material Culture, Visual Anthropology, Islam & Muslim Societies,
Indian Ocean & East Africa
Awards
York Massey Fellowship - 2024-25
York Fellowship Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies - 2015-16
All Publications
Book Chapters
Publication
Year
‘Architects of Time: Coloniality, Clocktowers, and Calendars on the East African Coast,’ in Architectures of Colonialism: Constructed Histories, Conflicting Memories, ed., V. Egbers, C. Kamleithner, Ö. Sezer, and
A. Skedzuhn-Safir, De Gruyter-Birkhäuser (Basle, Germany), 59–75
2024
Co-authored with P. Bentley, “The Dialogic Exhibition,” in Canadian Contributions to the Study of Islamic Art and Archaeology, M. Milwright & E. Baboula (eds.), McGill-Queen’s University Press (Montreal, Canada). pp. 351-75. 24 pages.
2022
“The Siyu Qur’ans: Illuminated Qur’an Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa,” in Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa, Z. Hirji (ed.), Oxford University Press (Oxford, UK), pp. 431-72. 41 pages
2019
Books
Publication
Year
Approaches to the Qur'an in Sub-Saharan Africa. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198840770. Covering a period from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century, this multidisciplinary volume examines Muslim engagements with the Qur'an in a variety of geographical locations in sub-Saharan Africa including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania. The volume's twelve case studies use different frameworks and methodological approaches from the academic disciplines of philology, historiography, anthropology, and art history. These studies explore a variety of media and modalities that Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, as elsewhere, use in their engagements with the Qur'an. These include: manuscripts; commentaries; translations; recitations and invocations; music and poetry; magical squares and symbolic repertoire; medicinal and curative acts; textiles, ink, paper, and wooden boards; spaces of education, healing and prayer, as well as spaces of dreams and spirit worlds. As such, the case studies move well beyond the materiality of the Qur'an as a physical book to explore the ways in which the Qur'an is understood, felt and imagined, as well as the contestations and debates that arise from these diverse engagements.
2019
Islam: An Illustrated Journey. Farhad Daftary and Zulfikar Hirji. 2018. Azimuth Editions in Association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies. ISBN: 1898592357. Beginning in the world of late antiquity and the pre-Islamic period, the book takes the reader through Islam’s formative era and early development in the Arabian Peninsula, the rise and decline of major Muslim dynasties and finally into its place in the modern world.
Lavishly illustrated and written in an accessible style, Islam: An Illustrated Journey tells the story of Islam, a faith that is today practised by more than a billion people and is the fastest growing religion in the world.
The book contains a multitude of images, graphics, maps and charts, features many of the masterpieces of art, architecture and literature produced by Muslims along with an easy-to-use glossary and a detailed bibliography that will appeal to both general audiences and enthusiasts of Islamic societies and cultures and world civilizations.
2018
Between Empires: Sheikh-Sir Mbarak al-Hinawy (1896-1959). Azimuth Editions. 2012. ISBN: 1898592099. An illustrated biography of one of the most famous governors of the East African coast. This scholarly publication uses numerous photographs and is based on newly discovered family archives and other primary sources. It also explores the growth and development of Mombasa from the 19th century up to the 1950s, its Arab and Swahili communities, and its unique cosmopolitain culture.
2012
Diversity and Pluralism in Islam and Muslim Contexts: Historical and Contemporary Discourses amongst Muslims I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2010 ISBN: 9781848853027 For more than fourteen hundred years Muslims have held multiple and diverging views about their religious tradition. This divergence encompasses such matters as authority; ritual practice; political power; law and governance; civic life; and the form and content of individual and communal expressions of their faith. Over the centuries Muslims have regularly debated these issues amongst themselves. However, despite the remarkable diversity of the Islamic tradition, and the plurality of understandings about Islam, Muslims are regularly and erroneously portrayed as internally homogeneous and dogmatic. This important book challenges such propositions by examining the ways in which matters of common concern to Muslims have been discussed by them and examined. The volume explores the processes by which Muslims construct notions of the self, the other and community, and addresses the socio-cultural tools that they employ in so doing. Offering contributions by world-class scholars, "Diversity and Pluralism in Islam" applies insights from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, political theory, comparative literature and Islamic studies.
2010
The Ismailis: An Illustrated History. Azimuth Editions in Association with Institute of Ismaili Studies. 2008. ISBN-10: 1898592268. Farhad Daftary and Zulfikar Hirji. This book contains some 400 images of manuscripts, artifacts and monuments, community documents as well as important historical and contemporary photographs. Based on modern scholarship in the fields of Ismaili and Islamic Studies, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible account of Ismaili history and intellectual achievements, set in the wider contexts of Islamic and world history.
2008
Journal Articles
Publication
Year
A Corpus of Illuminated Qur’ans from Coastal East Africa, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 14:2-4, 2023, 356-395.
This article examines a little-known corpus of illuminated Qurʾān manuscripts that were produced between ca. 1750–ca. 1850 in the Swahili city-states of Pate, Siyu, and Faza on Pate Island in the Lamu archipelago (Kenya). Now dispersed in collections in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman, the UK, and the USA, the manuscripts have many distinctive features: decorative frontispieces, sūra titles, basmalas, and division and prostration markers; locally developed Arabic script styles; colophons containing names of copyists and completion dates; endowment dedications; northern Italian-made paper; and, blind-stamped, leather covers. The list of known manuscripts presented in the appendix is aimed at encouraging the identification, digitization, and study of other manuscripts in the corpus. The study of their content, materiality, and contexts of production can advance scholarship on the histories of Islamic manuscript production in coastal East Africa and provide comparative material for manuscript studies in other regions of Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.
2023
The Faza Qur'an: Three Nineteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts from Coastal East Africa, Journal of Qur'anic Studies, 2022, 24:2, 21-47.
This article concerns three illuminated Qur’an manuscripts that were produced in coastal East Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century. Two of the manuscripts are currently located in collections in Oman and the third is in a collection in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Analysis shows that these manuscripts comprise three parts of a four-part Qur’an that was copied by ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿUmar al-Nawfalī (d. 1274/1857) in Faza, a town located on Pate Island in the Lamu archipelago in Kenya. The article describes the three Faza manuscripts and, using colophon evidence and external sources, situates the copyist and the manuscripts in their historical context. The article also provides a summary of the academic study of illuminated Qur’an manuscripts from coastal East Africa to date and provides a list of these manuscripts.
2022
Creative Works
Publication
Year
Exhibition: Memories of Stone: Landscapes of Prayer, Death and Commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Site-specific exhibition of texts, textile art and photographs. (Ismaili Centre Toronto, February 10-April 23).
2017
Exhibition: Our Stories, Our Images, Our Futures: Photographs made by Youth from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Hyderabad and Toronto. Site-specific photographic exhibition. Independent Project, CONTACT Photography Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, April 30-July 31).
2016
Exhibition: Sensational Words: Power, Beauty and Ephemeral Nature of Words in the Digital Age. Three site-specific art installations and two public lectures. Major Institutions Project, Nuit Blanche Festival (Ismaili Centre Toronto, Aga Khan Park & Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, October 1).
2016
Exhibition: Transformations: Enlightenment in a Digital Age. Four site-specific art installations (Ismaili Centre Toronto, September 1-December 31).
2016
Exhibition: Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan, Photographs by Margaret Morton. Site-specific photographic exhibition (Ismaili Centre Toronto, May 9-July 30).
2015
Exhibition: Connect, Create, Cairo: Build a City with History & Technology. Site-specific community engagement exhibition & Workshops (Ismaili Centre Toronto, November 15- February 28).
2014
Public Lectures
Publication
Year
ISLAM : MULTIPLE HISTORIES
2019
Islamic Arts : Multiple Histories, Multiple Expressions
