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About Ahmed Almaazmi

Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome.

Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome.

Ahmed's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Ahmed:

Indian Ocean World September 16, 2023

A Book of Waves

Stefan Helmreich

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In A Book of Waves (Duke UP, 2023), Stefan Helmreich examines ocean waves as forms of media that carry ecological, geopolitical, and climatological news about our planet. Drawing on ethnographic …
Indian Ocean World September 9, 2023

The Owl and the Occult

Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia

Divya Cherian

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Today I talked to Divya Cherian about her article "The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia" published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (June …
Indian Ocean World August 27, 2023

Boats in a Storm

Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942-1962

Kalyani Ramnath

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
For more than a century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading goods, supplying credit, and seeking work. This …
Indian Ocean World August 24, 2023

Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said

Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906

Lucia Carminati

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
Lucia Carminati's book Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906 (U California Press, 2023) probes migrant labor's role in shaping the …
Indian Ocean World August 16, 2023

Scribal Practice and the Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1800

Christopher D. Bahl and Stefan Hanß

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
Scribal Practice and the Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) is the first to chart the global diversity of colophons between 1400 and 1800. The volume presents a …
Indian Ocean World July 27, 2023

An Introduction to the Blue Humanities

Steve Mentz

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (Routledge, 2023) is the first textbook to explore the many ways humans engage with water, utilizing literary, cultural, historical, and theoretical connections and ecologies …
African Studies July 23, 2023

Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara

Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change

Erin Pettigrew

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara: Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change (Cambridge UP, 2023), Erin Pettigrew utilizes invisible forces and entities - esoteric knowledge and spirits - to …
Middle Eastern Studies July 14, 2023

My Egypt Archive

Alan Mikhail

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
A prominent historian provides an engaging on-the-ground account of the everyday authoritarianism that produced the Arab Spring in Egypt "A visceral and perceptive study of life under autocracy."--Publishers Weekly  An …
Indian Ocean World July 12, 2023

Islamic Law of the Sea

Freedom of Navigation and Passage Rights in Islamic Thought

Hassan S. Khalilieh

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
The doctrine of the modern law of the sea is commonly believed to have developed in Renaissance Europe. The role of Islamic law of the sea and customary practices is …
Islamic Studies July 10, 2023

Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice

Liana Saif, Francesca Leoni, and Matthew Melvin-Koushki

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice (Brill, 2020) brings together the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies, and …
Indian Ocean World July 2, 2023

Connecting the Indian Ocean World

Across Sea and Land

Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across Sea and Land (Routledge, 2023) and its companion, Merchants …
Indian Ocean World June 15, 2023

Houseways in Southern Oman

Marielle Risse

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
Houseways in Southern Oman (Routledge, 2022) explores how houses are created, maintained and conceptualized in southern Oman. Based on long-term research in the Dhofar region, it draws on anthropology, sociology, urban studies …
Indian Ocean World June 6, 2023

East Africa’s Human Environment Interactions

Historical Perspectives for a Sustainable Future

Rob Marchant

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
East Africa’s Human Environment Interactions: Historical Perspectives for a Sustainable Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) is an ambitious integration of ecological, archaeological, anthropological land use sciences, drawing on human geography, demography and economics …
Indian Ocean World May 29, 2023

Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World

Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000

Anne Gerritsen and Burton Cleetus

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000 (Bloomsbury, 2023): Introducing materiality into the study of the history of medicine, this volume hones …
Indian Ocean World May 27, 2023

Cargoes in Motion

Materiality and Connectivity Across the Indian Ocean

Burkhard Schnepel and Julia Verne

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Cargoes in Motion: Materiality and Connectivity Across the Indian Ocean (Ohio University Press, 2022) is an innovative collection of essays that foregrounds specific cargoes as a means to understand connectivity and …
Indian Ocean World May 23, 2023

Seasonal Knowledge and the Almanac Tradition in the Arab Gulf

Daniel Martin Varisco

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Seasonal Knowledge and the Almanac Tradition in the Arab Gulf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) is the first in English to survey indigenous knowledge of seasonal, astronomical, and agricultural information in Arab Gulf almanacs …
Indian Ocean World May 22, 2023

Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World

Philip Gooding

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) explores histories of droughts and floods in the Indian Ocean World, and their connections to broader …
Indian Ocean World May 21, 2023

India in the Indian Ocean World

From the Earliest Times to 1800 CE

Rila Mukherjee

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
India in the Indian Ocean World: From the Earliest Times to 1800 CE (Springer, 2022) integrates the latest scholarly literature on the entire Indian Ocean region, from East Africa to China. Issues …
Indian Ocean World May 20, 2023

Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought

Dilip M Menon and Nishat Zaidi

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Cosmopolitan Cultures and Oceanic Thought (Routledge, 2023) imagines the ocean as central to understanding the world and its connections in history, literature, and the social sciences. Introducing the central conceptual category …
Indian Ocean World May 16, 2023

The Briny South

Displacement and Sentiment in the Indian Ocean World

Nienke Boer

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In The Briny South: Displacement and Sentiment in the Indian Ocean World (Duke University Press, 2023), Nienke Boer examines the legal and literary narratives of enslaved, indentured, and imprisoned individuals …
Indian Ocean World April 16, 2023

The Making of Persianate Modernity

Language and Literary History between Iran and India

Alexander Jabbari

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Alexander Jabbari’s The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India (Cambridge University Press, 2023) narrates the cultural and literary history of one of the world's …
Indian Ocean World October 24, 2022

Under Empire

Muslim Lives and Loyalties Across the Indian Ocean World, 1775–1945

Michael Francis Laffan

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Michael Francis Laffan’s Under Empire: Muslim Lives and Loyalties Across the Indian Ocean World, 1775–1945 (Columbia University Press, 2022) traces a tapestry of historical actors, empires, and ideas across the …
Indian Ocean World January 28, 2021

Imperial Mecca

Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj

Michael Christo Low

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases …
Environmental Studies January 25, 2021

Scorched Earth

Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature

Emmanuel Kreike

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature (Princeton UP, 2021), Emmanuel Kreike offers a global history of environmental warfare and makes the case for why it should …