Jaakko Hameen-Anttila
Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies

- Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
Room 2/24
19 George Square - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9LD
Availability
Office hours: Monday 1-2 pm.
Background
He earned his PhD from the University of Helsinki (Finland) in 1994. Before coming to Edinburgh in June 2016, he worked as a Senior Researcher of the Finnish Academy 1997-2000 and Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Helsinki 2000-2016.
Undergraduate teaching
- Classical Arabic Literature
- Mystical Islam (Sufism)
- Contribution to the core courses History and Culture of Iran and Classical Persian Literature
Postgraduate teaching
Contribution to the core courses History and Culture of Iran
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Current PhD students supervised
- Lucy Deacon (ta'ziye - Shiite passion plays)
- Badreldeen Ismail (Sufism and Ash'arite theology)
- Mathew Barber (Mamluk and Fatimid historiography)
Past PhD students supervised
- Inka Nokso-Koivisto, Microcosm-Macrocosm Analogy in Rasa'il Ikhwan as-Safa' and Certain Related Texts (Helsinki).
- Ilkka Lindstedt, The Transmission of al-Madāʾinī’s Material. Historiographical Studies (Helsinki).
- Simon Loynes, the Qur'anic concept of wahy.
Research summary
- translation and textual transmission (Middle Persian - Arabic - Classical Persian)
- Classical Arabic and Persian literature
- the Shahname and its sources
- life of Zarathustra (in Islamic sources)
- Late Antiquity and Early Arab-Islamic culture
- early Arabic and Persian historiography
Current research interests
Dr Hämeen-Anttila is interested in Classical Arabic and Persian literature, Shahname studies, Umayyad and Abbasid cultural history, the influence of Late Antiquity on the Arab-Islamic culture, and translation and textual transmission especially between Arabic and Persian cultures from pre-Islamic times to the premodern period.Project activity
Dr Hämeen-Anttila is currently editing a part of al-Maqrizi's al-Khabar 'an al-bashar for Brill's Bibliotheca Maqriziana and writing a monograph on the lost Middle Persian and pre-Firdawsian literature, both written and oral, that is documented in Arabic, Classical Persian, and other sources.
-
When Sceherazade fails: The story of Balash and the Indian Princess
In:
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
Khodaynamag: Shahname-ye farsi-ye miyane
(321 pages)
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Between Arabic and Persian traditions: The maqamas of Hamid al-Din Balhi
In:
Intellectual History of the Islamicate World
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
Portrait of an Eighth-Century Gentleman: Khalid ibn Safwan in History and Literature
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Kesravi va-tarjomeha-ye 'arabi-ye Khodayname
(35 pages)
In:
Karname-ye tarikh, pp. 44-78
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Zoroaster as perceived in Arabic and Perso-Islamic literature
Research output: › Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary (Accepted/In press) -
Mesopotamia and the early Arabic and Islamic world
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Accepted/In press) -
Islam and the sanctity of Jerusalem
In:
Studies on the Children of Abraham, vol. 6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004406858_011
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
al-Khansā's poem in -ālahā and its Qur'ānic echoes: The long and the short of it
(15 pages)
In:
Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, vol. 29, pp. 1-15
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186318000305
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia
In:
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 29, pp. 536-538
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2018.1522158
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Book/Film/Article review (E-pub ahead of print)