Paul M. Cobb
Associate Professor
Field
Islamic and Middle Eastern History
Profile
Paul Cobb is a social and cultural historian of the medieval Islamic world, with an emphasis on the formative and middle periods, ca. 600-1500. By definition, his teaching and research are wide-ranging, with a special interest in medieval Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations, early Islam, the history of memory, and Muslim perspectives on the Crusades. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1989), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Islamic history from the University of Chicago (1991, 1997). His work has been supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others. He is a Fellow of the Medieval Institute and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
Current Project
A new, annotated translation of the “memoirs” of the Muslim warrior-poet Usama ibn Munqidh and the famous traveler and sloppy drunk Ibn Jubayr entitled Islam and the Crusades: Usama ibn Munqidh and Ibn Jubayr, under contract for Penguin Classics.
An intimate family history of the Banu Munqidh clan of medieval Syria (ca. 1000-1250), tentatively entitled Lords of Shayzar: A Muslim Family in the Age of Crusades.
Teaching Interests
HIST 43075-Seminar: Jerusalem
HIST 33000-History Workshop
HIST 30080-Medieval Middle East
HIST 13184-Getting Crusaded
Graduate Colloquium: Medieval Islamic Society
A course on the Mongols is planned for 2008
Recent Publications
“The Islamic Empire in Syria, 705-763,” ch. 7 in C. F. Robinson, ed., The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior-Poet in the Age of Crusades (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005).
Strategies of Medieval Communal Identity: Judaism, Christianity and Islam (co-edited with Wout van Bekkum; Leuven: Peeters, 2004).
“Virtual Sacrality: Making Muslim Syria Sacred Before the Crusades,” Medieval Encounters 8 (2002): 35-55.
White Banners: Contention in 'Abbasid Syria (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001).
Contact
Office: 479 Decio Faculty Hall
Phone: (574) 631-3035
Email: cobb.3@nd.edu
Office Hours: On Leave, 2006-2007