Bernheimer, Teresa

I am a historian of the medieval Middle East, that is the period from around 600 to 1200 CE. I am particularly interested in the formation of Islam in the context of Late Antiquity and beyond.

From 2009 until 2017, I taught early Islamic history at SOAS, University of London, in the very department in which I was first introduced to the fascinating world of the “origins of Islam”. After my BA at SOAS, I went on to study for an MPhil and DPhil at Oxford, where I also held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2006–2008. My research has focused on the emergence of social and religious elites and their influence on the formation of Islam and Muslim societies; my 2013 monograph The Alids: The First Family of Islam, 750–1200 is a study of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad that provides a historical perspective on an important commonality between Sunnis and Shiʿites, their shared reverence of the Prophet’s descendants – of great relevance in the current context of increasing sectarian conflicts in the Middle East.

Besides social history, I am also very much interested in material evidence for the early history of Islam, and the ways in which this can be used to supplement or sometimes correct the literary corpus. I am particularly fascinated by coins: In my paper “The Revolt of ʿAbdallah b. Muʿawiya, AH 127–130: A Reconsideration through the Coinage” (BSOAS 69, 2006) I show how numismatics can be an invaluable corroborative to the literary accounts: through the coins we not only get a more precise chronology of this revolt, but also a better sense of the context and main themes of the Abbasid Revolution a few years later. I am currently working on an article about some exceptional coins ascribed to a great Muslim woman, Zubayda, the wife of the famous caliph Haroun al-Rashid.

Approaches to and ways of teaching the history of early Islam are also close to my heart: I am committed to making early Islamic history more accessible to a wider audience, as I am convinced that a more nuanced understanding of the origins and early history of Islam will help untangle current misconceptions. In 2013, together with Tamima Bayhom-Daou, I edited four volumes that aim to introduce students to the notoriously controversial field of early Islamic history (Early Islamic History: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies). With the late historian of the Qur’an Andrew Rippin, I worked on the fifth edition of the widely used textbook Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, published in 2019.

In my current project “Colour Terms in Judaism and Islam 600–1200 (Beyond Conflict and Coexistence: The Entangled History of Jewish-Arab Relations)”, I aim to contextualize Muslim notions of colour in the broader context of Near Eastern traditions. The encounter of Near Eastern traditions is also the subject is also the subject of a forthcoming volume which I have edited with Ronny Vollandt, Textual Practices in Premodern Societies: Synopses and Lists). How did colour terminologies develop and change, and how were colour terms and theories interpreted and translated as they moved through and across cultures which used Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic? I look forward to finding out.

Areas of Interest

early history of Islam, Muslim-Jewish intellectual history, history and theory of colour, the rainbow

Historical Periods of Interest

6th through 12th centuries CE

Positions

Education

Awards and distinctions

Functions