Mohamad Ballan
Assistant Professor of Medieval History at Stony Brook University.
I am a historian of the pre-modern Mediterranean world, specializing in the political, intellectual and cultural history of medieval Iberia and North Africa. I am particularly interested in historiography, intercommunal relations, political theology, and borderlands/frontiers. My current research examines the relationship between historiography, royal patronage and developments in political thought in late medieval Spain between 1250 and 1500. My first book project, tentatively titled “Lord of the Sword and Pen,” focuses on the phenomenon of the “scholar-statesman”—jurists, physicians, historians and litterateurs who ascended to the highest administrative and executive offices of state—in the late medieval world. It focuses on the career and writings of Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374), the preeminent historian, philosopher and chancellor of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, situating this figure within a dynamic intellectual and political network of scholars, functionaries and statesmen across the late medieval Mediterranean world.
I also research and write about early Islamic history, Arab-Byzantine relations in the early medieval Mediterranean, Shi'ism, and the Ottoman-Safavid conflict.
https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/history/people/faculty/ballan
Blog: https://ballandalus.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ballandalus
I am a historian of the pre-modern Mediterranean world, specializing in the political, intellectual and cultural history of medieval Iberia and North Africa. I am particularly interested in historiography, intercommunal relations, political theology, and borderlands/frontiers. My current research examines the relationship between historiography, royal patronage and developments in political thought in late medieval Spain between 1250 and 1500. My first book project, tentatively titled “Lord of the Sword and Pen,” focuses on the phenomenon of the “scholar-statesman”—jurists, physicians, historians and litterateurs who ascended to the highest administrative and executive offices of state—in the late medieval world. It focuses on the career and writings of Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374), the preeminent historian, philosopher and chancellor of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, situating this figure within a dynamic intellectual and political network of scholars, functionaries and statesmen across the late medieval Mediterranean world.
I also research and write about early Islamic history, Arab-Byzantine relations in the early medieval Mediterranean, Shi'ism, and the Ottoman-Safavid conflict.
https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/history/people/faculty/ballan
Blog: https://ballandalus.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ballandalus
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Papers by Mohamad Ballan
The rise of a distinct class of scholar-officials, whose members included Christians, Muslims and Jews working for different (often competing) dynasties, was underpinned by similar networks of patronage, intellectual interests and a shared geography. These highly-educated individuals rose to prominence as chancellors, treasurers, and councilors within the royal courts in Iberia and were responsible for producing a multitude of works, while patronizing pieces of art and architecture that embodied their particular worldview.
Lisān al-Dīn b. al-Khaṭīb provides us with an illustrative example of this class of individuals during the 8th/14th century. This figure followed in the footsteps of leading Spanish Muslim scholar-officials such as Abū Bakr b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Ibn ‘Amīra, Ibn Sa‘īd and Ibn al-Abbār, individuals who had exercised significant administrative and political authority while also being deeply involved in various intellectual and literary pursuits during the 7th/13th century. Ibn al-Khaṭīb authored over 50 works, including historical chronicles, epistolography, biographical dictionaries, poetry, medical texts, and political treatises, throughout his career. This dissertation illustrates his role at the intersection of intellectual and political developments and demonstrates how his literary production was closely intertwined with his function as a statesman. It provides the first comprehensive study in English of Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s life, from his birth into a minor family in the small town of Loja in 713/1313 to his rise as a physician and scribe in the Nasrid court, his transformation from a client and servant of the Nasrid dynasty into an itinerant scholar-official who sought to establish his own individual power and influence across the Islamic West, to his controversial assassination in Fez in 776/1374. It looks particularly closely at the letters that he exchanged with his broader network of scholars, nobles, functionaries and kings across the Mediterranean world to think about the question of loyalty, ties of obligation and individual strategies of survival in the Islamic West during this period.
https://search-proquest-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/docview/2202894085?accountid=14657
https://www.revistas.ufg.br/historia/article/view/65276
Book Reviews by Mohamad Ballan
Public Scholarship by Mohamad Ballan
The rise of a distinct class of scholar-officials, whose members included Christians, Muslims and Jews working for different (often competing) dynasties, was underpinned by similar networks of patronage, intellectual interests and a shared geography. These highly-educated individuals rose to prominence as chancellors, treasurers, and councilors within the royal courts in Iberia and were responsible for producing a multitude of works, while patronizing pieces of art and architecture that embodied their particular worldview.
Lisān al-Dīn b. al-Khaṭīb provides us with an illustrative example of this class of individuals during the 8th/14th century. This figure followed in the footsteps of leading Spanish Muslim scholar-officials such as Abū Bakr b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Ibn ‘Amīra, Ibn Sa‘īd and Ibn al-Abbār, individuals who had exercised significant administrative and political authority while also being deeply involved in various intellectual and literary pursuits during the 7th/13th century. Ibn al-Khaṭīb authored over 50 works, including historical chronicles, epistolography, biographical dictionaries, poetry, medical texts, and political treatises, throughout his career. This dissertation illustrates his role at the intersection of intellectual and political developments and demonstrates how his literary production was closely intertwined with his function as a statesman. It provides the first comprehensive study in English of Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s life, from his birth into a minor family in the small town of Loja in 713/1313 to his rise as a physician and scribe in the Nasrid court, his transformation from a client and servant of the Nasrid dynasty into an itinerant scholar-official who sought to establish his own individual power and influence across the Islamic West, to his controversial assassination in Fez in 776/1374. It looks particularly closely at the letters that he exchanged with his broader network of scholars, nobles, functionaries and kings across the Mediterranean world to think about the question of loyalty, ties of obligation and individual strategies of survival in the Islamic West during this period.
https://search-proquest-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/docview/2202894085?accountid=14657
https://www.revistas.ufg.br/historia/article/view/65276