M. Ballan
@Ballandalus
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Historian of the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean. Assistant Professor of Medieval History @stonybrooku @SUNY. All views my own.
Port Jefferson, NY
Joined August 2014
My article, “Borderland Anxieties: Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374) and the Politics of Genealogy in Late Medieval Granada,” has just been published. It can be read here:
journals.uchicago.edu
Abstract This article seeks to contribute to larger scholarly conversations about the construction and deployment of difference in medieval borderland societies. It examines the ways in which...
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The Cambridge Guide to Global Medieval Travel Writing, ed. Sebastian Sobecki (@CambridgeUP, October 2025) https://t.co/qrXVWYm531
https://t.co/yZVItRGcpR
#medievaltwitter #medievalstudies #medievaltravelling #medievalsociety
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Thrilled to share that my book, Boundaries of Belonging, is coming out with Cambridge University Press in April. It traces how belonging was defined and contested, how loyalties shifted, and how these dynamics shaped everyday life and imperial politics in the Ottoman world.
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#Forthcoming An exciting new study of the philosopher Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī! Rosabel P. Ansari, Language and Being in al-Fārābī: The Philosophy of Taškīk https://t.co/8YIPAYseHg
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Social Network Analysis and Medieval History, ed. Matthew Hammond (@ArcHumanities, July 2025) https://t.co/koJXfqGjRd
https://t.co/kpjavkDohw
#medievaltwitter #medievalstudies #medievalsociety
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My DFG-funded project on Islamic genealogical trees will convene a workshop next week. Please do let me know if you are in the neighborhood. For the program visit the link 👇or see below. #GenealogicalTrees #Genealogy #IslamicPoliticalThought
https://t.co/sWTfGX1sGw
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An article (in Portuguese) about the MSS of the 18th-c. Damascene-born polyglot scholar & translator João de Sousa (Yuhannā al-Dimashqī). Alongside Arabic & Portuguese, he was fluent in French, Italian, Maltese, Castilian, Turkish, Persian (& some Latin). https://t.co/dk2hchhLjB
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Christie's sale is today! I was particularly interested in this volume of Sahih al-Bukhari, attributed to the Hafsid Tunisia, 15th CE. Its binding covers share striking similarities with those of the mushaf copied by the Almohad caliph al-Murtada in Marrakesh in the 13th CE!
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A notation dated 1673 by the official dragoman to "Sultan" Louis XIV, Buṭrus bin Ḥajj Diyāb al-Ḥalabī AKA Pierre Dipy, a Maronite from Aleppo who was chair of Arabic & Syriac at the Collège Royal in Paris and a curator of Middle-Eastern manuscripts in the king's library.
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Andalusi MS (dated 472/1079) of al-Bāqillānī's "Tamhīd" from the royal library of al-Mutawakkil, emir of Badajoz.
نسخة أندلسية عتيقة من كتاب التمهيد لإمامنا القاضي أبي بكر بن الباقلاني، كتبت عام 472هج لخزانة أمير بطليوس المتوكل على الله، وعليها تملك وطرر بخط الإمام أبي القاسم الصيرفي. https://t.co/5oFr0bsU4a.
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A letter in Portuguese Aljamiado by Sidi Yahya u Taᶜfuft, a Muslim Berber ally to Portugal from the region of Dukkala, Morocco. In this letter (c.1517-8) to certain Dom Nuno, he expresses the duality of his situation: "Muslims say I'm a Christian and Christians say I'm a Muslim"
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OPEN ACCESS🏆 Albert the Great and his Arabic Sources: Medieval Science between Inheritance and Emergence, eds. Katja Krause, Richard C. Taylor (@Brepols, August 2024) https://t.co/7fsoBCFXum
https://t.co/w2BKlR49mY
#medievaltwitter #medievalstudies #medievalscience
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Jerrilynn Dodds, Visual Histories from Medieval Iberia: Arts and Ambivalence (@ArcHumanities, August 2024) https://t.co/gGKzMO7htz
https://t.co/XAfUu02KfK
#medievaltwitter #medievalstudies #medeivalart #medievalspain
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OPEN ACCESS🏆 Studia Historica. Historia Medieval, Volume 42, Number 2 (2024): Negociación y conflicto en la cultura política de la Castilla bajomedieval https://t.co/R2ApSlpvlI
https://t.co/CQM0pvsyED
#medievaltwitter #medievalstudies #medievalpoland
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Among the gems of the medieval Mediterranean: fourteenth-century Italian written in Arabic characters. The text is a translation of a diplomatic missive sent from Tunis to Pisa, ca. 1366.
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The Department of History at Stony Brook University (State University of New York) is seeking to hire an Assistant Professor of Early Modern or Modern Eastern Europe/Eurasia. Area of area of specialization is open. December 15 deadline. https://t.co/6O1HcOe6uB
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The Department of History at Stony Brook University (State University of New York) is seeking to hire an Assistant Professor of Early Modern or Modern Eastern Europe/Eurasia. Area of area of specialization is open. December 15 deadline. https://t.co/6O1HcOe6uB
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The Department of History at Stony Brook University is seeking to hire an Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese History. Area of expertise is open. December 1 deadline. https://t.co/H9R20IBqLz
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New article alert! Join us today at the polyglot Ottoman court with a colorful language primer from Topkapı Palace. each entry shows 6 different languages, allowing us to study language instruction & Ottoman language ideology in the 15th century
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A newly discovered fragment of a petition to Saladin! So far the fourth to turn up in the Geniza. https://t.co/8kT71z3izs
Newly discovered: the third known petition to Saladin in the Geniza! From a convert to Islam (al-muhtadī) named Nāṣir the son of Bū l-Faraj. Details here: https://t.co/34PbDKQvYT
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new article alert! join us to explore Ibāḍī history in 8th-cent Arabia, complete with a rebellion against the Umayyads and a fiery khuṭba! this new article includes an Arabic edition & French translation of the khuṭba of Abū Ḥamza al-Shārī
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