Ashkan Bahrani
Education
- Ph.D. in Religious Studies: Critical Studies in Asian, Islamic, and Jewish Traditions, Vanderbilt University, USA (May 2023) — Dissertation: “The Violence of the Enchanted Souls: A Genealogical Approach to Sufi Debates in Premodern Iran (9th–15th cent)”
- M.A. in Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, USA (December 2017)
- M.A. in Islamic Philosophy and Kalām, Shiraz University, Iran (September 2009)
- B.A. in Law, Shiraz University, Iran (2006)
Research Interests
- Critical theories of religion; history of premodern Sufism; the study of “world religions” in the modern academy; Persian and Arabic Sufi literature.
Biography
Dr. Ashkan Bahrani is Assistant Professor of Comparative Humanities at Habib University, specializing in religious studies with a focus on critical theories of religion, premodern Sufism, and the academic study of world religions. His research investigates the genealogy of Sufism in premodern Greater Iran, challenging monolithic portrayals by examining internal debates and the influence of modern “world religions” discourse.
Immediately before Habib, he was Assistant Professor of Religion and History at Al-Akhawayn University, Morocco (Fall 2024–), teaching Comparative Religion, Religion in International Affairs, History of the Arab World, and Global Islam in the Contemporary World. He completed his Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University (2023), where he also worked as a Persian tutor (2018–2022), and was an Adjunct Lecturer at Sewanee: The University of the South (Spring 2018). He has held postdoctoral positions and coordinated international projects on interreligious histories, contributing editions, translations, and critical analyses of Sufi texts.
Selected Publications
- ’Umar al-Suhrawardī: Studies, Editions, Translations (English, Arabic, Persian), with Aydogan Kars, Brill, 2021.
- “The Politics of Aestheticization or the Aesthetics of Depoliticization? A Critique of M. Shafīʿī Kadkanī’s Take on Sufism,” Journal of Sufi Studies (Brill), 16(2), 2027 (forthcoming).
- Guest Editor, “Metempsychosis Across Religious Traditions,” Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 38(2), 2025.
- “Four Epistles of Sahlagī: Newly Recovered Sources on Early Sufism, Theology, and Traditionism,” with Aydogan Kars, Studia Islamica (Brill), 120, 2025 (forthcoming).
- “Knowledge and Causality in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Book of Giving, and the Buddhist Notion of Dependent Origination,” with Aydogan Kars, Religions, 13(9), 2022.
- The Mirrors of Nothingness (Āyenehāie Nīstī): Apophatic Theology in the Works of Mawlānā Rūmī and Meister Eckhart (Persian), Tehran: ʻElm Publication, 2011 — Best Book of the Season in Mysticism, Winter 2011.
Honors & Awards
- Best Book of the Season in Mysticism (2011)
- Best Book of Iranian Seminaries (2014)
- Tuition Scholarship and Departmental Stipend, Vanderbilt University (2014–2019)
- International Institute of Islamic Thought Summer Program Grant
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