James Weaver takes up substitute professorship
From January 2026, for a period of eighteen months, James Weaver will take up a position at the University of Oxford to cover the research leave of Prof. Tahera Qutbuddin, where he will primarily be responsible for the teaching of Classical Arabic literature.
During his time on the project, James Weaver has been working on the conceptual background of Mamluk-era discourses on humility, tracing the development of the concept from its appearance in the writing of renunciant ascetics in the eighth and ninth centuries through its reception by later Sufi authors, such as al-Ghazali. In particular, he has been looking at the relationship between notions of humility and certain social practices, such as dress, eating, and carrying one’s own provisions.
James Weaver will continue to be affiliated with the project and will publish the results of his work so far over the coming months. He is also co-organizing a conference entitled “Humility across Times and Cultures: Concepts, Practices, Artifacts”, scheduled for September this year.
We would like to thank James for the excellent and pleasant collaboration, and we wish him all the best at Oxford.