Position:

University Lecturer in Arabic and Islam

Faculty / College Address:

Oriental Institute / Pembroke College

Email:

christopher.melchert@pmb.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

• Islamic Movements and Institutions, Ninth-Tenth Centuries C.E.

Current Projects:

• Sufism and other renunciant movements before the Junaydi synthesis; the life and works of Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

Courses Taught:

• 'Hadith, Islamic law, and early Sufism'

Recent Publications:

• ‘Exaggerated fear in the early Islamic Renunciant Tradition’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, 21 (2011): 283-300.
• ‘“God created Adam in his image”’, Journal of Qur’anic Studies 13/1 (2011): 113-24.
• ‘Bukhārī and His Ṣaḥīḥ’, Le Muséon 123 (2010): 425-54.
• ‘Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal’s Book of Renunciation’, Der Islam 85 (2008): 345-59.
• ‘Māwardī, Abū Ya‛lá, and the Sunni Revival’. Pp. 37-61 in Prosperity and Stagnation: Some Cultural and Social Aspects of the Abbasid Period (750-1258). Edited by Krzystof Kościelniak.  Orientalia Christiana Cracoviensia, Monographiae 1.  Cracow: UNUM, 2010.
• ‘Khargūshī, Tahdhīb al-asrār’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 73 (2010): 29-44.
• ‘The Relation of the Ten Readings to One Another’, Journal of Qur’anic Studies 10/2 (2008): 73-87.
• ‘The History of the Judicial Oath in Islamic Law’. Pages 309-26 in Oralité et lien social au Moyen Âge (Occident, Byzance, Islam): parole donnée, foi jurée, serment.  Edited by Marie-France Auzépy and Guillaume Saint-Guillain.  Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilization de Byzance Monographies 29.  Paris: ACHCByz, 2008.
• Works of Abu Dawud al-Sijistani', Al-Qantara 29 (2008): 9-44.
• 'Whether to Keep Women out of the Mosque: A Survey of Medieval Islamic Law". Pages 59-69 in Authority, Privacy and Public Order in Islam: Proceedings of the 22nd Congress of l'Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants. Edited by B. Michalak-Pikulska and A. Pikulsi. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 148. Leuven: Peeters, 2006.
• Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Makers of the Muslim World. Oxford : Oneworld, 2006.
• 'Basran Origins of Classical Sufism', Der Islam 82 (2005): 221-40.
• 'The Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal: How It Was Composed and What Distinguishes It from the Six Books', Der Islam 82 (2005): 32-51.
• "Hasan al-Basri, al-". Pages 121-7 in Dictionary of Literary Biography 311: Arabic Literary Culture, 500-925. Edited by Michael Cooperson and Shawkat M. Toorawa. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005.
• "Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the Qur'an", Journal of Qur'anic Studies 6/2 (2004): 22-34.
• "The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law". Pages 351-66 in The Formation of Islamic Law. Edited by Wael B. Hallaq. The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 27. General editor Lawrence I. Conrad. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.
• 'The Etiquette of Learning in the Early Islamic Study Circle'. Pages 33-44 in Law and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Memory of Professor George Makdisi. Edited by Joseph E. Lowry, Devin J. Stewart, and Shawkat M. Toorawa. (Warminster): E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004.
• "The Meaning of qala "l-Shafi"i in Ninth-Century Sources". Pages 277-301 in "Abbasid Studies. Edited by James E. Montgomery. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 135. Leuven: Peeters, 2004.
• "The Early History of Islamic Law". Pages 293-324 in Methods and Theories in the Study of Islamic Origins. Edited by Herbert Berg. Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts 49. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
• "The Piety of the Hadith Folk', International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002): 425-39.
• "Qur'anic Abrogation Across the Ninth Century'. Pages 75-98 in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory. Edited by Bernard Weiss. Islamic Law and Society, 15. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
• "Early Renunciants as Hadith Transmitters", The Muslimn World 92 (2002): 407-18.
• "Traditionalist-Jurisprudents and the Framing of Islamic Law", Islamic Law and Society 8 (2001):383-406.
• "Sufis and Competing Movements in Nishapur, 9th-10th Centuries C.E.", Iran 39 (2001): 237-47.
• "The Hanabila and the early Sufis", Arabica, 48 (2001):352-67.
• "Bukhari and Early Hadith Criticism", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 121 (2001):7-19.
• 'Ibn Mujahid and the Establishment of Seven Qur'anic Readings', Studia Islamica, no. 91 (2000), 5-22.