Shawkat M. Toorawa

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American University
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University of Mississippi
William & Mary

Shawkat M. Toorawa

Shawkat M. Toorawa is Professor of Arabic Literature, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University.

Professor Toorawa’s book, Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture (2005), focused on a bookman in ninth-century Baghdad. His edited and co-edited collections include Arabic Literary Culture, 500–925 (2005); The Western Indian Ocean: Essays on Islands and Islanders (2007); Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith (2011); The City That Never Sleeps: Poems of New York (2015); The Hajj: Pilgrimage in Islam (2016); and Anglophone Muslim Women Writing (2021). In preparation is the Edinburgh Companion to Qur’anic Literary Studies. His translations include A Time Between Ashes and Roses: Poems (2004), by the contemporary Arab poet, Adonis; and Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad (2015), by the 13th-century historian Ibn al-Sa‘i. Forthcoming is The Devotional Qur’an: Surahs and Passages from the Heart of Islam. For the past decade, Professor Toorawa has been co-Executive Editor of the Library of Arabic Literature, an initiative to edit and translate significant texts of the premodern Arabic literary heritage.