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Mimi Hanaoka

University of Richmond, Religious Studies, Faculty Member

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Mimi Hanaoka is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond, where she is a scholar of history and religion. Her areas of specialty include: Islamic thought, history, and historiography; pre- and early modern Persianate history; inter-Asian connections between West Asia, South Asia, and East Asia; the history of Iran-Japan relations; Islam and modernity; Asia and modernity; global history; Sufism; dream theory; theories and methods in the study of religion; Persian local histories; authority in the Islamic world; center-periphery power dynamics; genealogies; sacred space.

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American University of Beirut

New York University Abu Dhabi

Sean W . Anthony

Ohio State University

Alejandra B Osorio

Wellesley College

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi

University of York

Martin van Bruinessen

Universiteit Utrecht

Rola El-Husseini

Lund University

Rustam Shukurov

Austrian Academy of Sciences

University of Florida

Marlene Laruelle

The George Washington University

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Papers by Mimi Hanaoka

Syed Ross Masood and a Japanese Model for Education, Nationalism, and Modernity in Hyderabad

History of Education Quarterly, 2022

Syed Ross Masood (1889-1937), grandson of the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmad Khan and former princip... more Syed Ross Masood (1889-1937), grandson of the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmad Khan and former principal of Osmania University, traveled in 1922 from India to Japan as Director of Public Instruction for Hyderabad to assess Japan’s educational system. In Japan and Its Educational System, a report published in 1923, Masood concluded that education had been key to Japan’s rapid modernization and recommended that Hyderabad follow the country’s model of modernization and educational reform: transmit Western knowledge through widespread vernacular education, and focus on the imperial tradition, freedom from foreign control, and patriotic nationalism. Masood sought to use mass vernacular education to create in Hyderabad a nationalist subject, loyal to the ruling Muslim dynasty, who absorbed modern scientific knowledge with its Western epistemic foundations but who remained untainted by Western norms. This study contextualizes and historicizes Masood’s attempt to create in Hyderabad a new nationalist subject, focusing on his 1923 report about Japan.

Persian Historiography Across Empires: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, Sholeh Quinn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781108842211 (hbk), 250 pp

Iranian Studies, 2022

Trans-Iranian Railway, in regions like the Caspian coast, were among those directly impacted and ... more Trans-Iranian Railway, in regions like the Caspian coast, were among those directly impacted and displaced by such state land reform initiatives. Many were forced to pursue new occupations, including as temporary unskilled wage laborers on railway construction sites. Koyagi also sheds light on the many tribal communities who were exiled from railway routes, faced unprecedented state scrutiny, were pushed into semisedentary lives, and often became precarious wage laborers (p. 94). After the completion of the Trans-Iranian Railway, many such constituents lost their temporary employment and were forced to beg for money and food, often in the same train stations they helped build through upending their traditional way of life. Throughout the book, Koyagi offers a meticulously researched and empirically rich history of the construction of the railways and the reoriented movements subsequently enabled. His robust sources range from articles in a wide range of newspapers and periodicals, to political cartoons, petitions, debates within the majles, reports by British and American counselors, travelogues and memoirs. This rich array of literary, archival, and visual sources also offers the reader insight into a period of Iranian history that witnessed the proliferation of print culture, national press, and an expanding public sphere, particularly in the wake of the Constitutional Revolution (p. 64). Koyagi shows how these sites functioned as key spaces for the development of a national imaginary, as well as public debates and contestations, about the Trans-Iranian Railway. Koyagi's manuscript makes a significant contribution to the field of modern Iranian and Middle Eastern history by offering a well-researched and convincing account of the ways in which the Trans-Iranian Railway, from inception to realization and usage, was produced by a host of local and transnational actors, and in turn helped produce divergent national subjects with differing mobilities. In doing so, he makes a number of successful interventions in the historiography of modern Iran. Firstly, Koyagi shows that the building of the Trans-Iranian Railway was always about much more than the creation of material infrastructureit was also about producing new forms of modern national subjectivity, differing levels of mobility, and a reorganization of movements across the nation. Secondly, through focusing on a series of marginalized figures and decentralized stories, the book clearly demonstrates that Reza Shah was one of many actors, several of whom came before and after his reign, who contributed to the realization of the project, benefited from its final form and/or suffered its consequences. Finally, in Koyagi's account, the Tran-Iranian Railway was a key factor in producing hierarchically differentiated modern citizen subjects through categories such as class, gender, and religion. Iran in Motion offers a comprehensive account of a large-scale, transnational infrastructure project through the lens of how it was simultaneously produced by and helped produce difference in a modernizing Iran.

Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities and Imagined Histories 13

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

The Phoenix Mosque and the Persians of Medieval Hangzhou Edited by George Lane

Journal of Islamic Studies, 2020

Dr. Mimi Hanaoka - A&S Sabbatical Fellow

Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances, and Taxonomies of Belonging

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Living Virtues of the Land

Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces

Ali Anooshahr. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: A Study of Politics and Invented Traditions

The American Historical Review, 2020

Sky Blue Stone: The Turquoise Trade in World History

Iranian Studies, 2019

Contexts and Authorship

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions

Perspectives from the Peripheries

Journal of Persianate Studies, 2015

Authors of local histories composed in Persia during the 10th-15th centuries deftly wove their la... more Authors of local histories composed in Persia during the 10th-15th centuries deftly wove their lands and their communities into Islamic narratives rooted in the Islamic heartlands of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia. They positioned their communities to better fit into the scope of Islamic history and claimed privileged connections to Mohammad and divine or prophetic authority in various ways. City and regional histories from Persia challenge and reconfigure notions of what constitutes “central” or “peripheral” in the medieval Islamic world and articulate identities that are simultaneously deeply local yet enmeshed within the broader Muslimomma. Authors and compilers used several literary strategies that, amongst other things, “centered” their cities and regions by including narratives about thesayyedsandsharifsassociated with the region; incorporating narratives of legitimating dreams and visions; associatingsahābawith the land; highlighting sites of pious visitation (ziārat) and other sour...

Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan: Dreams and Their Uses in Persian Local Histories

Iranian Studies, 2013

This paper is designed to put forth a proposal for configuration of an optimized observation netw... more This paper is designed to put forth a proposal for configuration of an optimized observation network based on GNSS CORS with a view to continued monitoring of crustal deformation in the East-Asian region. For this purpose, a comprehensive analysis of the results of the testing of various forms of GNSS CORS observation network tentatively constructed based on the Asia-Pacific IGS station has confirmed that geometrically arranged minimum five and ten or more reference points and an EAREF, constructed with a baseline length no longer than 2,500km, can produce an optimum outcome. And an EAREF-applied analysis on the effects of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of March 2011 shows that there were conspicuous positional movements in Japan and Korea while there was no significant movement in other regions.

Local Histories from the Medieval Persianate World: Memory, Legitimacy, and the Early Islamic Past

Medieval Persianate local histories form a heterogeneous genre, but a trait these diverse texts s... more Medieval Persianate local histories form a heterogeneous genre, but a trait these diverse texts share is that they perform a balancing act: they simultaneously respond to and challenge assumptions about the centrality of Arabs, Arabic, Arabia, Iraq, Syria, the ṣaḥābah (Companions of the Prophet), tābiʿūn (Successors of the Companions), Alids, sayyids, and sharīfs while at the same time claiming their own importance within these frameworks. Authors of Persianate local histories composed during the fourth/tenth- to ninth/early-fifteenth centuries argued for the legitimacy and centrality of their communities on the peripheries of empire by including narratives about descendants of the Prophet associated with the region addressed in the history, be it a city, town, or province; incorporating narratives of legitimating dreams and visions; associating ṣaḥābah with the land; highlighting sites of pious visitation (ziyārāt) and other sources of blessing or sacred power (barakah); and incorp...

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Peripheries

2 NarshakhI describes MuJ:iammad as wearing a "kuliih-i safid," and kuliih is the general Persian... more 2 NarshakhI describes MuJ:iammad as wearing a "kuliih-i safid," and kuliih is the general Persian term for a cap, though it could also more specifically mean a high or medium high soft cap. The kuliih and the qalansuwa-a cap worn either under a turban or by itselfwere both part of a typical medieval Persian costume. Both items are distinct from the turban ('imiima or du/band).

Lessons from the Peripheries

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography, 2000

Dreaming of the Prophet

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography, 2000

The View from Anatolia

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography, 2000

Syed Ross Masood and a Japanese Model for Education, Nationalism, and Modernity in Hyderabad

History of Education Quarterly, 2022

Syed Ross Masood (1889-1937), grandson of the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmad Khan and former princip... more Syed Ross Masood (1889-1937), grandson of the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmad Khan and former principal of Osmania University, traveled in 1922 from India to Japan as Director of Public Instruction for Hyderabad to assess Japan’s educational system. In Japan and Its Educational System, a report published in 1923, Masood concluded that education had been key to Japan’s rapid modernization and recommended that Hyderabad follow the country’s model of modernization and educational reform: transmit Western knowledge through widespread vernacular education, and focus on the imperial tradition, freedom from foreign control, and patriotic nationalism. Masood sought to use mass vernacular education to create in Hyderabad a nationalist subject, loyal to the ruling Muslim dynasty, who absorbed modern scientific knowledge with its Western epistemic foundations but who remained untainted by Western norms. This study contextualizes and historicizes Masood’s attempt to create in Hyderabad a new nationalist subject, focusing on his 1923 report about Japan.

Persian Historiography Across Empires: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, Sholeh Quinn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781108842211 (hbk), 250 pp

Iranian Studies, 2022

Trans-Iranian Railway, in regions like the Caspian coast, were among those directly impacted and ... more Trans-Iranian Railway, in regions like the Caspian coast, were among those directly impacted and displaced by such state land reform initiatives. Many were forced to pursue new occupations, including as temporary unskilled wage laborers on railway construction sites. Koyagi also sheds light on the many tribal communities who were exiled from railway routes, faced unprecedented state scrutiny, were pushed into semisedentary lives, and often became precarious wage laborers (p. 94). After the completion of the Trans-Iranian Railway, many such constituents lost their temporary employment and were forced to beg for money and food, often in the same train stations they helped build through upending their traditional way of life. Throughout the book, Koyagi offers a meticulously researched and empirically rich history of the construction of the railways and the reoriented movements subsequently enabled. His robust sources range from articles in a wide range of newspapers and periodicals, to political cartoons, petitions, debates within the majles, reports by British and American counselors, travelogues and memoirs. This rich array of literary, archival, and visual sources also offers the reader insight into a period of Iranian history that witnessed the proliferation of print culture, national press, and an expanding public sphere, particularly in the wake of the Constitutional Revolution (p. 64). Koyagi shows how these sites functioned as key spaces for the development of a national imaginary, as well as public debates and contestations, about the Trans-Iranian Railway. Koyagi's manuscript makes a significant contribution to the field of modern Iranian and Middle Eastern history by offering a well-researched and convincing account of the ways in which the Trans-Iranian Railway, from inception to realization and usage, was produced by a host of local and transnational actors, and in turn helped produce divergent national subjects with differing mobilities. In doing so, he makes a number of successful interventions in the historiography of modern Iran. Firstly, Koyagi shows that the building of the Trans-Iranian Railway was always about much more than the creation of material infrastructureit was also about producing new forms of modern national subjectivity, differing levels of mobility, and a reorganization of movements across the nation. Secondly, through focusing on a series of marginalized figures and decentralized stories, the book clearly demonstrates that Reza Shah was one of many actors, several of whom came before and after his reign, who contributed to the realization of the project, benefited from its final form and/or suffered its consequences. Finally, in Koyagi's account, the Tran-Iranian Railway was a key factor in producing hierarchically differentiated modern citizen subjects through categories such as class, gender, and religion. Iran in Motion offers a comprehensive account of a large-scale, transnational infrastructure project through the lens of how it was simultaneously produced by and helped produce difference in a modernizing Iran.

Methodologies for Reading Hybrid Identities and Imagined Histories 13

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

The Phoenix Mosque and the Persians of Medieval Hangzhou Edited by George Lane

Journal of Islamic Studies, 2020

Dr. Mimi Hanaoka - A&S Sabbatical Fellow

Holy Bloodlines, Prophetic Utterances, and Taxonomies of Belonging

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Sacred Bodies and Sanctified Cities

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Living Virtues of the Land

Prophetic Etymologies and Sacred Spaces

Ali Anooshahr. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: A Study of Politics and Invented Traditions

The American Historical Review, 2020

Sky Blue Stone: The Turquoise Trade in World History

Iranian Studies, 2019

Contexts and Authorship

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions

Perspectives from the Peripheries

Journal of Persianate Studies, 2015

Authors of local histories composed in Persia during the 10th-15th centuries deftly wove their la... more Authors of local histories composed in Persia during the 10th-15th centuries deftly wove their lands and their communities into Islamic narratives rooted in the Islamic heartlands of Iraq, Syria, and Arabia. They positioned their communities to better fit into the scope of Islamic history and claimed privileged connections to Mohammad and divine or prophetic authority in various ways. City and regional histories from Persia challenge and reconfigure notions of what constitutes “central” or “peripheral” in the medieval Islamic world and articulate identities that are simultaneously deeply local yet enmeshed within the broader Muslimomma. Authors and compilers used several literary strategies that, amongst other things, “centered” their cities and regions by including narratives about thesayyedsandsharifsassociated with the region; incorporating narratives of legitimating dreams and visions; associatingsahābawith the land; highlighting sites of pious visitation (ziārat) and other sour...

Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan: Dreams and Their Uses in Persian Local Histories

Iranian Studies, 2013

This paper is designed to put forth a proposal for configuration of an optimized observation netw... more This paper is designed to put forth a proposal for configuration of an optimized observation network based on GNSS CORS with a view to continued monitoring of crustal deformation in the East-Asian region. For this purpose, a comprehensive analysis of the results of the testing of various forms of GNSS CORS observation network tentatively constructed based on the Asia-Pacific IGS station has confirmed that geometrically arranged minimum five and ten or more reference points and an EAREF, constructed with a baseline length no longer than 2,500km, can produce an optimum outcome. And an EAREF-applied analysis on the effects of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of March 2011 shows that there were conspicuous positional movements in Japan and Korea while there was no significant movement in other regions.

Local Histories from the Medieval Persianate World: Memory, Legitimacy, and the Early Islamic Past

Medieval Persianate local histories form a heterogeneous genre, but a trait these diverse texts s... more Medieval Persianate local histories form a heterogeneous genre, but a trait these diverse texts share is that they perform a balancing act: they simultaneously respond to and challenge assumptions about the centrality of Arabs, Arabic, Arabia, Iraq, Syria, the ṣaḥābah (Companions of the Prophet), tābiʿūn (Successors of the Companions), Alids, sayyids, and sharīfs while at the same time claiming their own importance within these frameworks. Authors of Persianate local histories composed during the fourth/tenth- to ninth/early-fifteenth centuries argued for the legitimacy and centrality of their communities on the peripheries of empire by including narratives about descendants of the Prophet associated with the region addressed in the history, be it a city, town, or province; incorporating narratives of legitimating dreams and visions; associating ṣaḥābah with the land; highlighting sites of pious visitation (ziyārāt) and other sources of blessing or sacred power (barakah); and incorp...

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Peripheries

2 NarshakhI describes MuJ:iammad as wearing a "kuliih-i safid," and kuliih is the general Persian... more 2 NarshakhI describes MuJ:iammad as wearing a "kuliih-i safid," and kuliih is the general Persian term for a cap, though it could also more specifically mean a high or medium high soft cap. The kuliih and the qalansuwa-a cap worn either under a turban or by itselfwere both part of a typical medieval Persian costume. Both items are distinct from the turban ('imiima or du/band).

Lessons from the Peripheries

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography, 2000

Dreaming of the Prophet

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography, 2000

The View from Anatolia

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography, 2000

Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Peripheries. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were al... more Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived? In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text's creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological and professional communities. By reading these texts in such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and centre-periphery relations.

“Ibn al-Balkhī” [Ibn Balkhi] in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition, Part 2023-2.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition, 2023

“Ibn al-Balkhī” [Ibn Balkhi] in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition, Part 2023-2.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions_ʿAlids_Karbalaʾ_Mawla_Rashidun_Ulamaʾ.pdf

"The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions is the first comprehensive single-... more "The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions is the first comprehensive single-volume reference work offering authoritative coverage of ancient religions in the Mediterranean world. Chronologically, the volume’s scope extends from pre-historical antiquity in the third millennium B.C.E. through the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. An interdisciplinary approach draws out the common issues and elements between and among religious traditions in the Mediterranean basin."
Edited by Eric Orlin; Associate Editors: Lisbeth S Fried, Jennifer Wright Knust, Michael L Satlow, Michael E Pregill.
https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Encyclopedia-of-Ancient-Mediterranean-Religions/Orlin-Fried-Knust-Satlow-Pregill/p/book/9780415831970

Review of The Rebel and the Imām in Early Islam: Explorations in Muslim Historiography, by Najam Haider

The English Historical Review , 2022

Najam Haider's book is a path-breaking work that explores 'what it meant to write history in the ... more Najam Haider's book is a path-breaking work that explores 'what it meant to write history in the early Islamic period' (p. 25). Haider asks the seemingly straightforward (yet actually complex) questions of how history was written and for whom it was written during the early Islamic period. The result is meticulously researched scholarship that proposes a new model of understanding early Islamic historiography. Haider's work will be influential and discussed for decades to come, especially given its broad applicability both in terms of genre (chronography, biography and prosopography) and the communal affiliations of the authors he discusses (Twelver Shi'i, Zaydi Shi'i, and non-Shi'i/Sunni). While other scholars have zeroed in on specific texts or proposed more narrowly applicable models, Haider proposes a model for understanding early Islamic historiography that is the most comprehensive to date. Haider argues that early Muslim historical writing demonstrates continuities with late antique models, which traversed linguistic and geographic boundaries and created trans-cultural norms and expectations. The audiences for these works expected authors to develop the core structure of an event or individual through narrative detail which gave meaning to an incident or individual within a particular interpretative framework. Haider proposes a three-phase construction of early Muslim historical writing: a skeletal myth is fleshed out with narrative detail, which is then understood in an interpretative framework, which in turn is framed within broader political, social and sectarian commitments. Importantly, the categories of Sunni and Shi'i seem to be largely irrelevant in terms of techniques of historical writing for the early Muslim period, and it is this argument that makes Haider's proposed model widely applicable to different types of sources that emerge from the different communities that Haider uses to build his argument. Haider bases his analysis on three illustrative examples (each of which draws on many sources), each with a detailed chapter devoted to it, that encapsulate the distinctive aspects of early Islamic historiography. Chapter One, 'Modeling Islamic Historical Writing', summarises the state of the field and outlines the thesis of the book, which is that the rhetoricised historiography of the late antique period is likely to have influenced the development and norms of early Islamic historical writing. Haider crystallises his thesis thus: authors of the early Muslim world held presuppositions about historical writing that resemble those of late antiquity … these historians employed literary devices and stylistic elaborations that both made a story more edifying and conveyed some type of moral lesson. At the same time, they wove stories into interpretative frameworks that inscribed meaning onto an event or biography. This suggests that

Persian Historiography Across Empires: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, Sholeh Quinn, Cambridge: Cambridge

Iranian Studies, 2022

Sholeh Quinn's Persian Historiography Across Empires: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals is a sw... more Sholeh Quinn's Persian Historiography Across Empires: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals is a sweeping and erudite study exploring the enterprise of historical writing in Persian during the 16 th and 17 th centuries. The book underscores the connectedness of histories and the permeability of political boundaries, as individual historians, styles, genres, and specific texts moved across and within the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. One of the strengths of Quinn's book is its decentering of Iran in its exploration of Persian historical writing, as well as how it brings Safavid historiography into direct conversation with Ottoman and Mughal historiographies. The book highlights a trans-regional, trans-imperial Persianate world connected through texts and people, and documents what happens to those texts and people as they circulated across the Persianate world. Quinn's scholarship identifies trends and highlights commonalities among a broad collection of the historical writing of three different empires, offering a 30,000-foot view of the enterprise of historical writing in Persian during the 16 th and 17 th centuries and demonstrating the arbitrariness of silo-ing Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal histories from one another. Among the book's central arguments is that Persian historical writing drew on earlier Persian language literary-historiographical models, most notably the Timurid models. Quinn is attuned to the texts' interdependence on each other and how they were transformed through use and revision. Quinn argues that a method of imitative writing-which drew on earlier works-permeated 16 th and 17 th-century Persian historical writing, and authors were engaged in a creative process of "active engagement and dialog with the past" (p. 8) when interacting with, modifying, changing, or rewriting earlier texts. Quinn draws attention to four conventional elements often found in Persian histories: the benefits of history; bibliographies; genealogies; and dream narratives. Quinn makes two main observations: firstly, the survival of these conventional elements was highly dependent on whether the author modeled his history on earlier works; and secondly, these conventional elements, when they existed, appeared across imperial boundaries and were shared among Persian chronicles. Quinn builds her argument about the continuity and transformation of Persian historiography on the basis of several microhistories and close readings, focusing on individual historians; themes embedded within histories written by various authors; and the issue of genre. In Chapter 3, Quinn zooms in on historian Ghiyas al-Din Khvandamir (ca. 880-942/ ca. 1475-1535/1536), who moved from Khurasan to India, tracing the arc of a career and oeuvre that moved between empires, genres, and patrons. Khvandamir was not the only historian to move from Safavid to Mughal domains, however, and thus Quinn also briefly

Review of The Rebel and the Imām in Early Islam: Explorations in Muslim Historiography, by Najam Haider (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019; pp. 316. £75).

The English Historical Review , 2022

Najam Haider's book is a path-breaking work that explores 'what it meant to write history in the ... more Najam Haider's book is a path-breaking work that explores 'what it meant to write history in the early Islamic period' (p. 25). Haider asks the seemingly straightforward (yet actually complex) questions of how history was written and for whom it was written during the early Islamic period. The result is meticulously researched scholarship that proposes a new model of understanding early Islamic historiography. Haider's work will be influential and discussed for decades to come, especially given its broad applicability both in terms of genre (chronography, biography and prosopography) and the communal affiliations of the authors he discusses (Twelver Shi'i, Zaydi Shi'i, and non-Shi'i/Sunni). While other scholars have zeroed in on specific texts or proposed more narrowly applicable models, Haider proposes a model for understanding early Islamic historiography that is the most comprehensive to date. Haider argues that early Muslim historical writing demonstrates continuities with late antique models, which traversed linguistic and geographic boundaries and created trans-cultural norms and expectations. The audiences for these works expected authors to develop the core structure of an event or individual through narrative detail which gave meaning to an incident or individual within a particular interpretative framework. Haider proposes a three-phase construction of early Muslim historical writing: a skeletal myth is fleshed out with narrative detail, which is then understood in an interpretative framework, which in turn is framed within broader political, social and sectarian commitments. Importantly, the categories of Sunni and Shi'i seem to be largely irrelevant in terms of techniques of historical writing for the early Muslim period, and it is this argument that makes Haider's proposed model widely applicable to different types of sources that emerge from the different communities that Haider uses to build his argument. Haider bases his analysis on three illustrative examples (each of which draws on many sources), each with a detailed chapter devoted to it, that encapsulate the distinctive aspects of early Islamic historiography. Chapter One, 'Modeling Islamic Historical Writing', summarises the state of the field and outlines the thesis of the book, which is that the rhetoricised historiography of the late antique period is likely to have influenced the development and norms of early Islamic historical writing. Haider crystallises his thesis thus: authors of the early Muslim world held presuppositions about historical writing that resemble those of late antiquity … these historians employed literary devices and stylistic elaborations that both made a story more edifying and conveyed some type of moral lesson. At the same time, they wove stories into interpretative frameworks that inscribed meaning onto an event or biography. This suggests that

Review of The Phoenix Mosque and the Persians of Medieval Hangzhou, edited by George Lane

Journal of Islamic Studies , 2021

The idea of the Muslim world is examined against the backdrop of a vast body of national and geog... more The idea of the Muslim world is examined against the backdrop of a vast body of national and geographic material. As a rare intellectual treat, the study inducts the reader to a politically engaged and historically informed interpretation of the imaginary of the Muslim world. A must-read for scholars studying Islam in the globalized Muslim world from a multidisciplinary perspective.

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 2018

Review of The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition by Elias Muhanna... more

Hanaoka Review of Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires by Ali Anooshahr_The American Historical Review, Volume 125, Issue 4 October 2020 pp 1407–1408.

The American Historical Review, 2020

Review of Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires by Ali Anooshahr in The American Historical... more

Review of Arash Khazeni, Sky Blue Stone: The Turquoise Trade in World History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014)

Iranian Studies, 2019

"Syed Ross Masood and a Japanese Model for Education, Nationalism, and Modernity in Hyderabad" featured on the HEQ&A podcast, produced by History of Education Quarterly, the official journal of the History of Education Society (USA).

History of Education Quarterly, 2023

My article is featured on the HEQ&A is a podcast produced by History of Education Quarterly, the ... more

Dr. Mimi Hanaoka featured on the "Podcasts@Boatwright" University of Richmond Boatwright Library podcast: “Views of the Asian Other: Educational Reform and Models of Modernity for Japan and Muslim Reformers, 1851-1925.”

"Podcasts@Boatwright" , 2020

Dr. Mimi Hanaoka featured on the "Podcasts@Boatwright" University of Richmond Boatwright Library ... more Dr. Mimi Hanaoka featured on the "Podcasts@Boatwright" University of Richmond Boatwright Library podcast: “Views of the Asian Other: Educational Reform and Models of Modernity for Japan and Muslim Reformers, 1851-1925.”
Podcast link is available here:
https://boatwrightpodcasts.urlibraries.org/dr-mimi-hanaoka-as-sabbatical-fellow/

Mimi Hanaoka featured on the "New Books in Middle Eastern Studies" podcast: Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Periphery (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

"New Books in Middle Eastern Studies" podcast series, 2019

Professor Mimi Hanaoka's book is featured on the "New Books in Middle Eastern Studies" podcast se... more