Thomas A. Carlson

Once again, you can think that a country’s government is very bad without also thinking that the children of that country deserve to die for their government’s sins.

1190s

I have a little argument in a chapter of my current book manuscript that one side-effect of pervasive religious diversity was the difficulty of religion-delimited moral reform of society or the economy. Many reforms were attempted, but very few succeeded even modestly! We take fuqaha too seriously.

Nurul Amin Shah Alam, Blind Rohingya refugee dumped by CBP, dies in cold "They just left him."

Profoundly evil and sad story of a blind Rohingya refugee who survived the killing fields of Myanmar only to die alone in the cold in Buffalo, NY after Border Patrol dumped him 5 miles from home without notifying his family.
www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/20...

At least, it was an awakening.

Image of a copy of the book, Astrology and History in Early Islam: Aligning Heaven and Earth, by Antoine Borrut

GUYS GUYS GUYS my incredible colleague, Antoine Borrut, just texted me this pic, the BOOK IS IN HAND, which means you too can have it soon!

Astrology and History in Early Islam, coming out with Edinburgh!

I'm also pleased to have evidence that basically every religious group forged treaties to regulate diversity in the #medieval #MiddleEast. While Sunni ulama ascribed theirs to #Umar, #Jews, #Christians, #Samaritans, #Zoroastrians, and #Mandaeans all claimed treaties with Muhammad himself.

I'm particularly pleased that I was able to demonstrate that the appendix to the #Mandaic Book of the Zodiac must have been composed after the mid-tenth-century, because it presumes the plausibility of #Byzantine attacks on Aleppo (Mandaic Glab < Arabic Halab). That makes it a #medieval source!

Thank you, for both!

I'm preparing the bibliography of my current monograph manuscript, and I'm being delighted by reminders of the various things I brought together. I'm primarily a scholar of Islam and Christianty, but I learned so much about #medieval #Zoroastrians, #Mandaeans, and #Samaritans, and enjoyed doing so.

The History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sawma "For anyone interested in the extraordinary journey of Rabban Sauma from 13th-century China to Latin Christian Europe, Thomas A. Carlson's The History of Mar Yabhallaha &amp; Rabban Sawma is a godsend...

I haven't been very active on here for a while, but I do have a new book out: an edited English translation of a 14th-C primary source, including mechanics of Mongol rule in the Middle East, an eastern Turkic traveler's views of W Europe, and too much violence.
hackettpublishing.com/history/midd...

I enjoy introducing students to medieval hadith criticism and isnadology, in part to highlight the artificiality of modern scholarly historical method and to make the point that there is not an obviously correct way to study the past, but rather competing culturally-shaped intuitions.

Unfortunately almost all the intellectual history of the history profession that I have seen is merely focused on which books were published when and cited by Great Men™, methods we would not accept in other subfields. It astonishes me how rarely we scholars apply our critical methods to ourselves.

Interesting. Structurally it's like a Prisoner's Dilemma.

There's a partial West Coast US exception (UCLA, UCSB), but in the midwest & eastern US I don't think elite history departments ever included early Islam.

History of premodern Africa is even more gappy.

Some departments define "premodern" as "precolonial" to claim they do "premodern" non-West. 2/2

I would love to see a good history of the profession that explains why elite history departments, which rejected (at least verbally) Eurocentric scope in favor of (alleged) global coverage, included premodern China and Japan but mostly not premodern Muslims/MENA. 1/2

Whole thread:

me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you?

students: no AI

I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion

Happy birthday to you!

Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt A new global history of the slave trade, the lives of enslaved people, and the role of slavery in the formation of Jewish and Arab-Islamic culture in the medieval Middle East

Yay! I just noticed that my book is available for preorder. Use the code PUP30 for 30% off. Share with your librarian! Will ship on Jan 20, 2026 just in time for uhhhhh someone's birthday? Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt | Princeton University Press press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

tossing a food bank a couple bucks won’t turn SNAP on.

but you personally can’t turn SNAP on, and you maybe can toss a food bank a couple bucks.

the Empress Zoe

the Empress Zoe https://www.wikiart.org/en/byzantine-mosaics/the-empress-zoe-867

Next month, I will be convening a short-course at University of Lille in France, titled the Orient’s East: Iran and Eurasia in the 1st Millennium. I’ll be delivering six talks on the Sasanians, Central Asia, the “Silk Roads”, & the Iranian relations with China.

ex-patria.univ-lille.fr/archives/4038

So what?

So?

An international perspective:

Wishing safety for all those in Melissa's path!

I saw a headline that said, "Melissa Expected to Rapidly Intensify," and I thought it could be an @theonion.com "local news" headline about a conversation over coffee which is anticipated to jump past social niceties straight to existential questions, childhood trauma, and personal commitments.

Same reason why everything has to have an app. Sweet sweet consumer data, to be sold to ad brokers.