Scholarship
Research
My research sits at the intersection of Islamic mysticism, medieval dream theory, and the transmission of knowledge across the premodern world. I am particularly interested in how Sufi masters constructed and contested spiritual authority through the interpretation of visionary experience.
Doctoral Dissertation
The Abyss of the Dream: Interpretation and Authority in Medieval Sufism
Columbia University, Department of Religion · 2025 · Advisor: Professor Katherine Ewing
This dissertation examines the role of dream interpretation (ta'bīr al-ru'yā) in the construction of Sufi spiritual authority from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. Drawing on a corpus of classical Arabic and Persian Sufi manuals, hagiographies, and dream interpretation handbooks, it argues that the capacity to interpret dreams — and to have one's own dreams interpreted favorably — was a central mechanism through which Sufi masters established, maintained, and transmitted their authority within the tradition.
The project engages with broader questions in the study of Islamic mysticism: the relationship between charismatic and textual authority, the role of the body and the psyche in Sufi epistemology, and the mechanisms by which esoteric knowledge is transmitted across generations.
Columbia GSAS Dissertation RecordPublications
Book Chapter · Routledge, 2020
"The Qalandariyya: From the Mosque to the Ruin in Poetry, Place, and Practice"
Co-authored with Professor Katherine Ewing. In Lloyd Ridgeon (Ed.), Routledge Handbook on Sufism.
An examination of the Qalandar Sufi tradition — the antinomian mystics who deliberately transgressed Islamic law and social convention as a form of spiritual practice — tracing their presence in poetry, sacred geography, and lived religious practice from Central Asia to the Maghreb.
View Publication RecordCited Scholarship · Cambridge University Press
Research cited in Anecdotal Disruptions
Cambridge University Press
Conference Paper · MESA Annual Meeting, 2022
"We Are Such Stuff as Dreams are Made of: Dreaming Reality and the Reality of Dreaming in Medieval Sufi Literature"
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting · Columbia University affiliation
Conference Paper · MESA Annual Meeting, 2015
Presented paper on Islamic mysticism
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting · Harvard Divinity School affiliation
Conference Paper · Harvard Divinity School, 2013
"Revolution and the National Myth in Qatar and Kuwait"
Harvard Divinity School · Harvard Conference Grant recipient
Senior Honors Thesis · UCLA, 2011
Research on Female Intellect in Islamic Law
Presented to the U.S. Congress, 2011 · UCLA Dean's Prize for Research
UCLA Daily Bruin CoverageResearch Areas
Medieval Islamic Mysticism
Sufi literature, dream theory, and visionary authority in the classical period (9th–13th c.)
Qalandar Sufi Tradition
Antinomian mysticism, sacred geography, and transgressive piety in the Islamic world
Graeco-Arab Translation Movement
The transmission of Greek philosophy into Arabic and its transformation in Islamic intellectual culture
Jewish History in the Medieval Middle East
Jewish-Muslim intellectual exchange and coexistence in the premodern Islamic world
Moroccan Sufism
Modern Sufi identity, colonial encounter, and the formation of the Moroccan Sufi self
Canton & the Abbasid Empire
The maritime Silk Road and the historical relationship between Tang/Song China and the Abbasid Caliphate