Ahmed, Faiz

Brown University

Research Title: Ottoman Americana: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Early United States in Contact and Exchange

Dr. Ahmed is Associate Professor of History at Brown University. He is a historian of the late Ottoman Empire, modern Middle East, and South-Central Asia, as well as diasporic communities connected to these regions. His core research and teaching interests include migration, mobility, and transnational exchange; students, scholars, and networks of learning; and the intersections of legal and constitutional history, citizenship, and diplomacy. His first book, Afghanistan Rising: Islamic Law and Statecraft between the Ottoman and British Empires, was published with Harvard University Press in November 2017.

Pivoting to the western hemisphere, Dr.Ahmed’s second book project and current research as an ANAMED fellow explores the history of relations between the Ottoman Empire and the United States—as seen from Ottoman perspectives. Based on work in Ottoman state archives and other rare collections from Istanbul to New England, this project examines the sociolegal, economic, and religious underpinnings of Ottoman-American ties during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.