My name is Henry – I am a second-year PhD student at the University of Chicago studying medieval Islamic civilization. My research focuses on the political, intellectual, and cultural environment of the Islamic Near East during the era of the First Crusade. I am particularly interested in the life of al-Ghazali and the impact of his work on contemporary political and intellectual conditions. My undergraduate thesis (“The People of Seljuq Baghdad, 1069-1089”) studied political and social conditions in Baghdad on the eve of al-Ghazali’s ascension to the professorship of the local Nizamiyya madrasa. I argued that a social group referred to by the sources as al-aewam (‘the masses’) played a significant role in shaping contemporary political discourse among the elites.
More generally, I am deeply interested in the history of ideas, particularly when it intersects with traditional political history. My research interests have therefore fallen broadly at the intersection of the history of ideas and so-called ‘social history’. I also study various topics in European history, literature, philosophy, art, and mathematics, especially related to the transformation of European civilization from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment."