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

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]

Career

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 and Reception

Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt

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 two years in economics, economic history, or the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa.[7]

The Animal in Ottoman Egypt

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 human-animal relations.[8] Scholarly reception was mixed.[9] It received the Gustav Ranis International Book Prize for being the best book on an international topic by a Yale ladder faculty member.[10]

Under Osman's Tree

Under Osman's Tree, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2017, received critical acclaim[11] and was awarded the M. Fuat Köprülü Book Prize of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association.[12]

God's Shadow

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 Selim I. The book garnered mostly positive reviews in newspapers.[13] In contrast, scholarly reception was very poor.

An Ottoman historian, Caroline Finkel characterized its assertions as "overblown".[14] Cornell Fleischer, Cemal Kafadar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam identified numerous factual and interpretational errors and described the work as a "tissue of falsehoods, half-truths, and absurd speculations."[15][16] A month later, they penned a rejoinder—in response to an article where Efe Khayyat and Ariel Salzmann questioned their motives behind writing an acerbic review[17]—which expanded on the list of Mikhail's factual errors, misrepresentations, and unorthodox scholarly practices, such as a reliance on Wikipedia articles.[18] Abdürrahim Özer of Bilkent University has since identified a long list of factual errors and misinterpretations in the book.[18][19][20] Ali Balci found the work to contain "some excessive comments for the sake of making Selim a part of the global history."[21]

Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa

Water on Sand, published by Oxford University Press in 2013, was met with positive reviews.[22]

My Egypt Archive

My Egypt Archive, Yale University Press, 2023. Depict a decade (2010-2001) Mikhail spend as a young researcher at National Archives of Egypt. [23]

Honors

In 2018, he received the Anneliese Maier Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.[24]

References

  1. ↑ "Anneliese Maier Research Award 2018 - The Award Winners". www.humboldt-foundation.de (in German).
  2. 1 2 3 4 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. ↑
  10. ↑ "The MacMillan Center International Book Prizes". The MacMillan Center. May 29, 2015. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  11. ↑
  12. ↑ Under Osman's Tree.
  13. ↑
  14. ↑ "Caroline Finkel - Master of the Universe?". Literary Review. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  15. ↑ "How to Write Fake Global History| Cromohs - Cyber Review of Modern Historiography". oajournals.fupress.net. 2020. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  16. ↑ "Fake global history in the age of fake news". www.eurozine.com. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  17. ↑ boundary2 (October 1, 2020). "Efe Khayyat and Ariel Salzmann — On the Perils of Thinking Globally while Writing Ottoman History: God's Shadow and Academia's Self-Appointed Sultans". boundary 2. Retrieved February 17, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  18. 1 2 "Romancing "American Selim" - K24". T24 (in Turkish). Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  19. ↑ Ozer, Abdurrahim. "Tweet-review of Alan Mikhail's book, God's Shadow". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  20. ↑ Butler, John (October 7, 2020). ""God's Shadow: Sultan Selim I, his Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World" by Alan Mikhail". Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  21. ↑ Balci, Ali (July 13, 2021). "Bringing the Ottoman Order Back into International Relations: A Distinct International Order or Part of an Islamic International Society?". International Studies Review. 23 (viab031): 2090–2107. doi:10.1093/isr/viab031. ISSN 1521-9488.
  22. ↑
  23. ↑ Kapil Komireddi (March 12, 2023). ‘My Egypt Archive’ Review: Doing History Under Tyranny. Wall Street Journal.
  24. ↑ "Alan Mikhail honored for work on environmental history".
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