Mariam Sheibani

Academic Bio

Mariam Sheibani is a PhD candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. She studies the intellectual history of medieval and modern Islamic societies, with a focus on Islamic law, theology, ethics and sufism. Her dissertation project entitled “The Common Good, Legal Maxims and Social Change in Medieval Islamic Law: The Contribution of ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām,” undertakes an intellectual biography of a seventh/thirteenth-century Shāfiʿī jurist who pioneered a crucial ethical turn in Islamic law and whose impact was widely felt across the Islamic world in subsequent centuries and up to the present day. Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s innovative thought represented a move away from a formal approach to the law towards a more ethical, teleological, and socially responsive legal discourse. Her project integrates unpublished manuscripts collected during extensive fieldwork in European and Middle Eastern manuscript libraries. Her PhD research has been supported by a fellowship from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and a Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship.