Alumni

On this page we record the people whose enduring efforts over so many years have done so much to ensure that the nCmY has flourished for so long.

As an independent journal established by association loi 1901, the nCmY has benefitted from the work of scholars around the world.

We thank them all.

Jan Thiele

In 2014, Jan Thiele, who was then Research Fellow at Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid, joined the CmY as member of the Editorial Committee. He was involved in the preparation of issues 19 (old series) to 9/28 and in the Special issues 1 and 2, and he retired from the CmY in 2019. He was then promoted Editor-in-Chief of the journal Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, published by Brill.

Jan Thiele’s work focuses on rational theology and its manuscript heritage. His publications include Theologie in der jemenitischen Zaydiyya (Brill, 2013). See https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8865-5997
http://ilc.csic.es/es/personal/jan.thiele

Maxim Yosefi

Maxim Yosefi, research fellow at the Seminar for Arabic and Islamic Studies of the University of Göttingen, started contributing to CmY in 2017. Apart from critical reviews (in issues 5/24 and 8/27) and a full-length article of his own (in issue 6/25), he prepared revised, edited and annotated English translations of the catalogues by A. Khalidov (1979) and V. Belyaev (1947), published in issues 7/26 and 10/29. He was also responsible for reviews of Arabic press in issues 6/25-9/28. Maxim Yosefi’s research interests include classical and tribal Arabic poetry, ethnography of the text, and the influence of Islamic and pre-Islamic ethical concepts on poets.

Adday Hernández López

Adday Hernández López was a member of the Editorial Committee for 6 issues of the nCmY — from issue 10/29 (January 2020) to issue 15/34 (July 2022).

Adday Hernández López is a scholar specialising in Islamic law in the premodern Islamic West, in the intellectual history in the same area and in the Arabic literature of the Horn of Africa. She has retired from the nCmY to become a tenured researcher at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean, CSIC (ILC), Madrid, where she had been a postdoctoral researcher. She has contributed to three research projects, has been awarded several prizes and scholarships, published works and articles in English and Spanish as a sole author and in co-authorship. She remains the deputy director of the Journal Hesperia: Culturas del Mediterráneo and secretary of the journal Anaquel de Estudios Árabes.

Hassan Farhang Ansari

Hassan Farhang Ansari, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Islamic Law and Theology, Princeton, specialises in Islamic theology, philosophy, law, and legal theory, focusing on Zaidi texts. He was a member of the Reading Committee of CmY, then nCmY, from 2015 to 2025.

Among his innumerable publications in Persian, French and English, let us single out here his two contributions to the Journal; “Un texte sur la controverse entre les Muʿtazilites et les Sunnites concernant un musulman qui commet un grand péché et qui meurt sans s’être repenti, composé par ʿAlī b. Nāṣir al-Ǧīlānī al-Lāhiǧānī (probablement un savant de la fin du viie/xiiie s.)”, CmY, New series 1/20, July 2015, pp. 33–56; with Mostafa Ahmadi (Independent Researcher) & Jan Thiele (ILC-CCHS, CSIC, Madrid); “’The New Methods’ (Al-ṭarāʾiq al-mustaḥdaṯa) by al-Hasan al-Raṣṣāṣ: Editio Princeps of a Treatise on Miscellaneaous Theological Topics”, nCmY 11/30, July 2020, pp. 76–106.

Anne Katrine Bang

Prof. Anne Katrine Bang, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen (Norway), joined the CmY, now nCmY, in 2015 as a member of the Reading Committee. She works on various forms of religious change in the Western Indian Ocean in the 19th and 20th centuries. Besides this, she sets up projects to make available new sources for this history, through mapping and digitising of primary Arabic textual material, and has started projects to digitise and conserve the manuscripts and texts in coastal East Africa which are in private ownership and in danger of environmental degradation (Riyadha Mosque in Kenya; The Maalim Idris Collection, Zanzibar).

She retired from nCmY in 2025. Among her notable publications, are: “My generation. Umar b. Ahmad b. Sumayt (1886–1973): Inter-generational Network transmission in a trans-oceanic Hadramı Alawı family, ca. 1925-1973”, in: Leif Manger & Munzoul A.M. Assal, Diasporas within and without Africa: dynamism, heterogeneity, variation, Uppsala, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2006; Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c. 1880–1940). Ripples of Reform, Leiden, Brill, ser. “Islam in Africa”, 16, 2014. She also contributed an article, “The Riyadha Mosque Manuscript Collection in Lamu: A Ḥaḍramī Tradition in Kenya”, pp. 125–153, to the Special Issue “Manuscripts in Transit: The case of Yemen” of the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 5/2–3, 2014, which Anne Regourd guest-edited.

Marco di Bella

Marco di Bella is a Book and Manuscript conservator, who joined CmY, now nCmY, as a member of the Reading Committee in 2015, and stayed until 2025. He worked first as a freelance conservator, dealing with various manuscripts collections in Europe and elsewhere, often on behalf of Unesco, and went on to be appointed Conservator at the Italian Ministry of Culture in 2024. In the 2010s, he conducted a very successful course of training in manuscript conservation at the Dār al-Maḫṭūṭāt in Sanaa. He contributed to the news of the Journal. He has several publications, notably:

“An attempt at reconstruction of early Islamic bookbinding: The box binding”, in: Michael J. Driscoll (ed.), Care and Conservation of Manuscripts, vol. 12, Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2011, pp. 99–116. He retired from nCmY in 2025.

Deborah Freeman Fahid

Deborah Freeman Fahid is an independent scholar, and former assistant curator and head of publications at The al-Sabah Collection, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Kuwait. She has worked in the field of Islamic art since 1995, when she was responsible for Islamic manuscripts and works on paper at Christie’s, King Street, London. From 2015 to 2025, she was a member of the Reading committee of the CmY, then nCmY, and of the Correspondents’ journal. She contributed to the News section of some of the journal issues. She is the author of several books, among them, Splendors of the Ancient East: Antiquities from The al-Sabah Collection, London, Thames & Hudson, 2013; Chess and Other Games Pieces from Islamic Lands, London, Thames & Hudson, ser. “The al-Sabah Collection”, 2018.

David Gerald Hirsch

David Hirsch, is well-known to librarians around the world, and became the President of the Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) from 2011 to 2012. He was the 2016 recipient of the Annual David H. Partington Award (MELA) together with Roberta L. Dougherty (University of Yale). For much of his life, from 1989 to 2018, he was Chief Librarian for Jewish, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, South Asian and Armenian Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). When he retired, he became Advisor at Mohammed bin Rashid Library-Dubai (2018–2024). Meanwhile, from 2006 to 2012, he was a board member at The Islamic Manuscript Association (TIMA), then from 2009–2011, Chief Librarian at Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage-National Library. From 2015 to 2025, he was a member of the Reading Committee of CmY, nCmY.

David not only contributed to many roundtables, workshops and conferences,but also addressed a more general audience, at, for example: “Histoire de l’imprimé dans les langues et les pays du Moyen-Orient. 2”, at the BnF, Paris, November 3 2005, and “Telling Our Story Part II: Cross-Dialogue for Strategies to Sustain Area Studies – Libraries, Archives and Scholarship”, May 2013.

Samer Traboulsi

Samer Traboulsi, who teaches History of the pre-modern Middle East, Arabia, and Ismailism at the University of North-Carolina, Asheville (US), became a member of the Reading Committee of CmY, then nCmY, from 2015 to 2025. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, 2005. His specialisation in Ismaili Tayyibi yielded famous publications, among them: “The Queen was Actually a Man: Arwaʾ bint Aḥmad and the Politics of Religion”, Arabica L (2003), pp. 96–108; and “Sources for the History of the Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlī daʿwa in Yemen and Its Relocation to India”, in: Anne Regourd (special guest), “Manuscripts in Transit: The case of Yemen”, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 5/2–3, 2014, pp. 246–274.