معرفی
Sahar Bazzaz is Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross, where she specializes in Middle Eastern and North African history with particular expertise in Islamic intellectual history, Ottoman studies, and the history of science. Her scholarly work bridges multiple disciplinary approaches to examine the complex intersections of religion, politics, and knowledge production in the Islamic world, especially in Morocco and the Ottoman Empire.
Dr. Bazzaz received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her academic journey reflects deep engagement with Maghrebi and Ottoman historical traditions, colonial encounters, and the dynamics of religious authority.
Her research focuses on three interconnected areas: (1) the history of Islamic science and knowledge production, particularly examining how scientific practices developed within Islamic contexts and interacted with European colonial science; (2) the political dimensions of religious authority in 19th and 20th century Morocco, with special attention to Sufi orders and saint veneration; and (3) Ottoman and Byzantine imperial geographies, analyzing how empires conceptualized and managed their territorial spaces. Her work consistently demonstrates how intellectual history intersects with political power and social transformation.
Analysis of her publications reveals a trajectory from focused studies on Moroccan religious politics toward broader examinations of global knowledge flows. Her early work centered on her book Forgotten Saints (2010) which examined how religious authority functioned in modern Morocco. More recently, her scholarship has increasingly addressed the globalization of science, particularly through her 2022 special issue in the British Journal for the History of Science which reframed historical approaches to science in Ottoman and Middle Eastern contexts beyond diffusionist models.
Her publications demonstrate methodological sophistication, combining close textual analysis with broader contextual understanding of imperial power structures. She frequently examines how individuals and communities engaged with scientific knowledge within specific historical circumstances, rather than treating science as a monolithic Western import.
