Alan Mikhail

Alan Mikhail (born 1979) is an American historian who is a professor of history at Yale University.[1] His work centers on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Education and career

Mikhail graduated in History and Chemistry from Rice University in 2001, and received his MA in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003.[2] His PhD was conferred from the same university in 2008. His thesis The Nature of Ottoman Egypt: Irrigation, Environment, and Bureaucracy in the Long Eighteenth Century was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences (2009) by Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).[2]

He served as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University for two years, before becoming an assistant professor of history at Yale University in 2010.[2] In 2013, he was promoted to full professor and became department chair in 2018.[2]

Works

Monographs

His first monograph, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt (2011), was a part of the Cambridge University Press series Studies in Environment and History.[3] Based on his doctoral dissertation, the book argues for using an environmental lens to understand relations between the Ottoman Empire and the province of Egypt.[4] It received a positive reception[5][6] and won the Roger Owen Book Award from MESA for the best book in a two-year period in economics, economic history, or the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa.[7]

The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, published in 2014 by Oxford University Press, examines Egypt's changing place in the Ottoman Empire and world economy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries through the lens of human-animal relations.[8] Scholarly reception was mixed.[9][10][11][12][13][14] It received the Gustav Ranis International Book Prize, awarded for the best book on an international topic by a Yale ladder faculty member.[15]

Under Osman's Tree, published by University of Chicago Press in 2017, received critical acclaim[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] and was awarded the M. Fuat Köprülü Book Prize of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association.[23]

God's Shadow was published by Liveright (an imprint of the trade publisher W. W. Norton) in August, 2020. The book argues for the central place of the Ottoman Empire in world history using the life and times of the empire's ninth sultan, Selim I. The book garnered mostly positive reviews[24][25][26][27][28][29] and was given starred reviews in Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.[30][31] [32] The book was harshly criticized by Cornell Fleischer, Cemal Kafadar and Sanjay Subrahmanyam who characterized it as error-laden, concluding "God’s Shadow is an excellent example of how global history should not be written."[33]

Edited collections

Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa, published by Oxford University Press in 2013, was met with positive reviews.[34][35][36][37]

Honors

In 2018, he received the Anneliese Maier Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.[38]

References
  1. "Anneliese Maier Research Award 2018 - The Award Winners". www.humboldt-foundation.de (in German).
  2. Mikhail, Alan (2017). "Alan Mikhail CV" (PDF).
  3. Mikhail, Alan (2011). Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History. Studies in Environment and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-00876-2.
  4. "Middle East Studies Association - Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Awards - Alan Mikhail". Middle East Studies Association. Retrieved October 30, 2020.
  5. Butzer, Karl W. (2012). "NATURE AND EMPIRE IN OTTOMAN EGYPT: An Environmental History. By Alan Mikhail". Geographical Review. 102 (3): 392–393. doi:10.1111/j.1931-0846.2012.00161.x. ISSN 1931-0846. S2CID 162890954.
  6. Borsch, Stuart (February 25, 2012). "Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (review)". The Middle East Journal. 66 (1): 172–173. ISSN 1940-3461.
  7. "Middle East Studies Association - Roger Owen Book Award - Alan Mikhail". Middle East Studies Association. Retrieved October 30, 2020.
  8. The Animal in Ottoman Egypt. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. December 1, 2016. ISBN 978-0-19-065522-8.
  9. Trumbull, George R. (February 2017). "The Environmental Turn in Middle East History". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 49 (1): 173–180. doi:10.1017/S0020743816001252. ISSN 0020-7438.
  10. Barakat, Nora (2016). "Review of THE ANIMAL IN OTTOMAN EGYPT". The Arab Studies Journal. 24 (1): 305–309. ISSN 1083-4753. JSTOR 44746861.
  11. Rader, Karen A. (December 1, 2014). "Alan Mikhail. The Animal in Ottoman Egypt". The American Historical Review. 119 (5): 1821–1822. doi:10.1093/ahr/119.5.1821. ISSN 0002-8762.
  12. Lanz, Tobias J. (April 1, 2015). "The Animal in Ottoman Egypt. By Alan Mikhail". Environmental History. 20 (2): 312–314. doi:10.1093/envhis/emv015. ISSN 1084-5453.
  13. Sedra, Paul (January 1, 2016). "The Animal in Ottoman Egypt". International Journal of Turkish Studies. 22 (1/2): 109.
  14. Buquet, Thierry (June 15, 2017). "Mikhail, Alan, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2014)". Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée (in French) (141). doi:10.4000/remmm.9361. ISSN 0997-1327.
  15. "The MacMillan Center International Book Prizes". The MacMillan Center. May 29, 2015. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  16. Duffy, A. (August 6, 2019). "Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History, by Alan Mikhail". The English Historical Review. 134 (568): 721–722. doi:10.1093/ehr/cez107. ISSN 0013-8266.
  17. Stolz, Daniel A. (June 1, 2019). "Alan Mikhail. Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History". The American Historical Review. 124 (3): 1178–1179. doi:10.1093/ahr/rhz389. ISSN 0002-8762.
  18. Dedeoglu, Cagdas (October 30, 2018). "Alan Mikhail, Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History". Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. 12 (3): 343–345. doi:10.1558/jsrnc.36555. ISSN 1749-4915.
  19. Çalışır, M. Fatih (April 15, 2018). "Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History". Nazariyat İslam Felsefe ve Bilim Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi (Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy and Sciences). 4 (2): 164–166. doi:10.12658/Nazariyat.4.2.D0052.
  20. White, Sam (January 1, 2017). "Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History". International Journal of Turkish Studies. 23 (1/2): 115.
  21. Low, Michael Christopher (July 1, 2018). "Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt & Environmental History. By Alan Mikhail". Environmental History. 23 (3): 641–643. doi:10.1093/envhis/emy013. ISSN 1084-5453.
  22. Imber, Colin (March 1, 2018). "The environment in the history of Ottoman Egypt". Metascience. 27 (1): 151–153. doi:10.1007/s11016-017-0271-1. ISSN 1467-9981. S2CID 172076893.
  23. Under Osman's Tree.
  24. "God's Shadow by Alan Mikhail book review | The TLS". TLS. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  25. Ormsby, Eric (September 11, 2020). "'God's Shadow' Review: Sword of the Caliph". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  26. Spencer, Richard. "God's Shadow by Alan Mikhail review — the Ottoman sultan who made our world". ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  27. "The King's Reach". airmail.news. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  28. Marazoni, Justin. "In just eight years Selim I became 'God's Shadow on Earth'". www.spectator.co.uk. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  29. Morris, Ian (August 18, 2020). "When the Ottoman Empire Threatened Europe — and the World". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  30. GOD'S SHADOW | Kirkus Reviews.
  31. "God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern World". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  32. Alan, Mikhail. "God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World". Library Journal. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  33. "How to Write Fake Global History| Cromohs - Cyber Review of Modern Historiography". oajournals.fupress.net. 2020. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  34. Cederlöf, Gunnel (December 1, 2013). "Alan Mikhail, editor. Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa". The American Historical Review. 118 (5): 1640–1642. doi:10.1093/ahr/118.5.1640a. ISSN 0002-8762.
  35. Abe, Satoshi (May 1, 2016). "Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa Edited by A lan M ikhail". Journal of Islamic Studies. 27 (2): 258–261. doi:10.1093/jis/etw003. ISSN 0955-2340.
  36. "Mikhail, Water on Sand". MERIP. June 2, 2013. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  37. "Review of Water and Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa". Arab Studies Quarterly. 35 (2): 214–215. 2013. doi:10.13169/arabstudquar.35.2.0214. ISSN 0271-3519. JSTOR 10.13169/arabstudquar.35.2.0214.
  38. "Alan Mikhail honored for work on environmental history".
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