Imad Jafar

Biography

Imad Asad Jafar is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Notre Dame. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, he completed his undergraduate studies at New York University and earned his master’s degree from SOAS University of London. His research focuses on South Asian Islamic intellectual history, with particular emphasis on the late colonial period. He is especially interested in the intellectual and religious lives of Muslim scholars and Sufi figures, the formation of religious authority, and the scholarly networks through which texts, ideas, and traditions circulated across South Asia. Part of his work seeks to move beyond conventional accounts of South Asian Islam organized primarily around fixed Deobandi, Barelwi, and Ahl-i Hadith identities by recovering the more complex intellectual relationships that existed among scholars and religious communities. His research draws on Arabic, Persian, and Urdu sources, including religious treatises, fatwas, and biographies. His scholarship has appeared in Islamic Studies, Brill’s Journal of Sufi Studies, and the Journal of Hanafi Studies.