Mariam Sheibani
Mariam Sheibani is a research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Program in Islamic Law and a lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. Her research interests are in Islamic intellectual and social history, with a focus on law, ethics, gender, and contemporary Islamic thought. She serves as lead blog editor for the Islamic Law Blog (formerly the SHARIAsourceBLOG) based at the Harvard Law School.
Dr. Sheibani received her PhD in Islamic thought from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a BA in public affairs and policy management, an MA in legal studies, and a second MA in Islamic thought.
Featured Work: SHARIAsource portal, Program in Islamic Law
Upcoming Projects: Her forthcoming book project, Islamic Legal Philosophy: Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām and the Ethical Turn in Medieval Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press), examines how Muslim jurists from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries addressed salient questions of legal philosophy and ethics, leading them to develop competing legal methodologies and visions of the law. In particular, she traces the development of a purposive, analytical, and socially responsive legal discourse that originated among Shāfiʿī jurists in Khorasan and continued to evolve in Ayyubid Damascus and Mamluk Cairo in subsequent centuries. The study centers on a prominent Damascene heir of Khorasani Shāfiʿism, ʿIzz al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Salām, a pivotal figure in the development of Islamic legal philosophy, ethics, and legal maxims (qawāʿid fiqhiyya). Learn more about her book project and other current research projects.
