Tariq Mir

I am currently a doctoral researcher in Islamic intellectual history under the supervision of Dr Ayman Shihadeh and Professor Hugh Kennedy, with a particular focus on Islamic philosophical theology (ʿilm al-kalām) and Arabic philosophy (falsafa) in the Islamic East. My doctoral research focuses on implementing current scholarly approaches in the study of post-Mongol Islamic intellectual history to explore, analyse, and contextualise the theology of the Tīmūrid philosophical theologian Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (1322-1390).

I began my research at the University of Cambridge, completing my BA and MPhil (2011-2015) in Theology and Religious Studies, during which I became deeply interested in Islamic theology and Arabic philosophy, Hellenic philosophy, and the mediaeval Christian theological tradition. The overlap between these three interests prompted me to investigate the rich history of Hellenic philosophy in the Islamic intellectual landscape and its effects on and interactions with Islamic theology. Furthermore, I also had the opportunity to explore the effects of the Mongol Conquests on the Islamic intellectual landscape particularly in the Islamic East and China.

Following my departure from Cambridge, I taught Theology and Philosophy at GCSE and A-Level for three years between 2015-2018. I then came to SOAS as a Visiting Research Student in January 2019 in preparation for doctoral research and spent a few months in Tokyo working as an educational consultant and undertaking independent research before finally returning to SOAS to start my PhD in autumn 2019.

I am very grateful to have been awarded an AHRC Doctoral Studentship funded by CHASE to support my research.

• Islamic Intellectual History/History of Ideas
• Islamic Theology and Arabic Philosophy
• Post-Mongol Islamic(ate) History (particularly in the Islamic East and China)
• Hellenic Philosophy (particularly Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism)
• Sino-Islamic theological discourse in late-imperial China