Ahmed H. al-Rahim

Professor Ahmed H. al-Rahim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, affiliated with the College of Arts & Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University (2009) and previously served as Senior Research Analyst at the U.S. Department of State's Office of Analysis for Near East and South Asia. His research focuses on medieval Arabic intellectual and philosophical history, with special emphasis on Avicenna's reception, Islamic ethics, and the historiography of Arabic philosophy. He currently directs the Islamic Studies program and the Medieval Studies program at UVa.

Education: Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Yale University (2009).

Research Interests include: Arabic philosophical historiography, medieval Islamic ethics, Qur'anic exegesis, and the role of biography in intellectual tradition. He leads the Einstein Stiftung Berlin-supported project Betwixt and Between: The Historiography of Medieval Arabic Philosophy, challenging Eurocentric periodizations of Islamic thought.

Major Awards: Mellon Humanities Fellowship (2019–2020), Henry Luce Foundation Fellowship (2013), and Einstein Stiftung Berlin Fellowship (2022). His publications span monographs like The Creation of Philosophical Tradition (2018) and articles in New Literary History, Curiositas, and The Cambridge History of World Literature.

Teaching: Undergraduate courses on Classical/Modern Islam and graduate seminars on Arabic theology, Qur'anic studies, and medieval literary biography. Advises on topics combining philosophy, ethics, and imperial culture.