About Samuel Thrope

Dr. Samuel Thrope is Curator of the Islam and Middle East Collection at the National Library of Israel. A widely published author and translator, Dr. Thrope has written for both scholarly journals and popular newspapers and magazines. He is the translator of Iranian author Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s 1963 Israel travelogue The Israeli Republic (Restless Books, 2017) and, with Dr. Domenico Agostini, of the ancient Iranian Bundahišn: The Zoroastrian Book of Creation (Oxford University Press, 2021). He is also the editor, with Dr. Roberta Casagrande-Kim and Dr. Raquel Ukeles, of the exhibition catalog Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past (Princeton University Press, 2018). He earned his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012.

NBN Episodes hosted by Samuel:

Shawkat M. Toorawa, "The Devotional Qur'an: Beloved Surahs and Verses" (Yale UP, 2025)

December 5, 2025

The Devotional Qur'an

Shawkat M. Toorawa
Hosted by Samuel Thrope

The Devotional Qur'an: Beloved Surahs and Verses (Yale UP, 2025) is a beautifully curated and translated collection of the Qur'anic surahs and verses …

Isabel Toral and Beatrice Gruendler, "An Unruly Classic: Kalīla and Dimna and Its Syriac, Arabic, and Early Persian Versions" (Brill, 2024)

August 3, 2025

An Unruly Classic

Isabel Toral and Beatrice Gruendler
Hosted by Samuel Thrope

The collection of wisdom fables known as Kalila and Dimna began its long literary life in Sanskrit more than two millennia ago, and was subsequently t…

Letizia Osti, "History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2024)

March 29, 2025

History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate

Letizia Osti
Hosted by Samuel Thrope

Abu Bakr al-Suli was an Abbasid polymath and table companion, as well as a legendary chess player. He was perhaps best known for his work on poetry an…