Publications
Scholarship across boundaries
Books, edited collections, articles, and chapters are arranged together by the questions they address—not separated by format.
Theme 01
Law, courts & confessional boundaries
Legal pluralism and the movement of litigants among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim institutions.
Books & edited publications
Monograph
A Common Justice
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
Examines why Christians and Jews under early Islam sought justice beyond their communal courts and how religious elites responded to these crossings of legal and confessional boundaries.
Articles & chapters
2023
“Even though it be against yourselves, or your parents and kinsmen” (Q 4:135): The Prioritization of God over Family in Classical Islamic Literature
Ha-Mizrah He-Hadash 62 (2023): 119–139 [Hebrew].
2016
The Introduction and Formalization of Civil Law in the East Syrian Church in the Late Sasanian–Early Islamic Periods
History Compass 14, no. 5 (2016): 231–244.
2015
The Legal and Social Bonds of Jewish Apostates and Their Spouses according to Gaonic Responsa
Jewish Quarterly Review 105, no. 4 (2015): 417–439.
2015
The Pact of ʿUmar in Religious and Cultural Contexts
Historia 35, no. 1 (2015): 31–64 [Hebrew].
2010
Christians Whose Force Is Hard: Non-Ecclesiastical Judicial Authorities in the Early Islamic Period
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53, no. 4 (2010): 579–620.
2009
Seeking Justice among Outsiders: Christian Recourse to Non-Ecclesiastical Judicial Systems under Early Islam
Church History and Religious Culture 89, nos. 1–2 (2009): 191–216.
2007
Communal Boundaries Reconsidered: Jews and Christians Appealing to Muslim Authorities in the Medieval Near East
Jewish Studies Quarterly 14, no. 4 (2007): 328–363.
Book chapters
2016
Muslim Involvement in Non-Muslim Political Affairs in the Early Islamic Period
In John Tolan (ed.), Medieval Minorities: Law and Multiconfessional Societies in the Middle Ages, 341–352. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.
2015
Justice
In Guy Stroumsa and Adam Silverstein (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions, 137–165. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
2013
Conversion to Islam: A Case Study for the Use of Legal Sources
History Compass 11, no. 8 (2013): 647–662.
2012
Legislating Boundaries: Gaonic Response to Islamic Challenges
In Avinoam Rosenak and Daphna Schreiber (eds.), The Halakhah: Hidden and Visible Conceptual and Ideological Contexts, 153–166. Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Van Leer Institute, 2012 [Hebrew].
2026
The Pact of ʿUmar: Interfaith Ties in the Early Islamic Period
In Erica C. D. Hunter (ed.), Religious Minorities of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey: Communities on the Margins. Bloomsbury Academic (I.B. Tauris), 2026.
Theme 02
Religious change, conversion & asceticism
Conversion as a social process shaped by households, institutions, material incentives, and inherited religious narratives.
Books & edited publications
Edited volume
Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times
With Arnold E. Franklin, Roxani Eleni Margariti & Marina Rustow. Brill, 2014.
Essays honoring Mark R. Cohen on documentary, legal, social, and intellectual encounters among communities of the medieval and early modern Mediterranean.
Edited sourcebook
Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age
With Nimrod Hurvitz, Christian C. Sahner & Luke Yarbrough. University of California Press, 2020.
Translated sources from the seventh through eighteenth centuries present conversion as a varied social, familial, legal, and religious process.
Articles & chapters
2026
Islamic Ascetic and Christian Monastic Ties in Early Abbasid Iraq: Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s Adaptation of the Maccabean Story of the Mother and Her Seven Sons
Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, advance online publication (2026): 1–25.
2025
Exploring the Liminal Characteristics of Muslim Converts: An Analysis of Rabbinic and Ecclesiastical Legal References from the Early Islamic to Abbasid Periods
Journal of the American Oriental Society 145, no. 1 (2025): 1–18.
2020
Female Conversion to Islam: A Sample Analysis of Medieval Narratives of the Prophetic Age
Mediterranean Historical Review 35, no. 1 (2020): 9–25.
2017
Conversion, Exemption, and Manipulation: Social Benefits and Conversion to Islam in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Medieval Worlds 6 (2017): 196–216.
2013
Halting Between Two Opinions: Conversion and Apostasy in Early Islam
Medieval Encounters 19, no. 3 (2013): 342–370.
Book chapters
2015
Conversion, Apostasy, and Penance: The Shifting Identities of the First Generations of Muslim Converts
In Arietta Papaconstantinou et al. (eds.), Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond, 197–218. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015.
2014
Are Gaonic Responsa a Reliable Source for the Study of Jewish Conversion to Islam? A Comparative Analysis of Legal Sources
In Arnold E. Franklin et al. (eds.), Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times, 119–138. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Forthcoming
The Survival of the Household under Early Islamic Rule
In Eduard Iricinschi and Chrysi Kotsifou (eds.), Coping with Religious Change: Adopting Transformations and Adapting Rituals in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Theme 03
Kinship, gender & community
How religious belonging was negotiated through families, marriage, maternal authority, apostasy, and durable ties across communal boundaries.
Books & edited publications
Edited volume
The Family in Late Antiquity
With Yaniv Fox. Open University of Israel Press, 2019.
A cross-traditional examination of family structures and perceptions in late antiquity, bringing Jewish, Christian, and Islamic materials into conversation.
Edited special issue
Kinship Encounters: People and Ideas in the Medieval Islamicate World
With Oded Zinger. Medieval Encounters 30, nos. 2–3, 2024.
A thematic collection examining how kinship relations carried people, norms, and ideas across religious and communal boundaries in the medieval Islamicate world.
Articles & chapters
2025
Kinship Ties between Apostates and their Former Coreligionists – A Comparison between Gaonic Positions and Legal Principles of the Four Sunni Legal Schools
Jewish Law Annual 33 (2025): 215–243 [Hebrew].
2024
Kinship Encounters: People and Ideas in the Medieval Islamicate World
With Oded Zinger. Introduction to special issue, Medieval Encounters 30, nos. 2–3 (2024): 131–172.
2023
Early and Medieval Islamic Views on Maternal Authority in Circumstances of Religious Differences
Al-Qanṭara 44, no. 2 (2023): 1–16.
2020
Women at the Crossroads of Muslim–Non-Muslim Encounters: Conversion and Intermarriage in the Early Islamic Period
In Clara Almagro Vidal, Jessica Tearney-Pearce, and Luke Yarbrough (eds.), Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean, 51–70. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.
2019
Family Does Matter: Muslim–Non-Muslim Kinship Ties in the Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Periods
In Petre Guran and David A. Michelson (eds.), Faith and Community around the Mediterranean: In Honor of Peter R. L. Brown, 209–226. Bucharest and Heidelberg, 2019 [2020].
2016
Communal Membership despite Religious Exogamy: A Critical Examination of East Syrian Judicial Sources
Journal of Near Eastern Studies 75, no. 2 (2016): 249–266.
Book chapters
2023
The Subversion of Gender Hierarchies in Ṣaḥābī Dialogues
In Sabine Schmidtke and Omer Michaelis (eds.), Religious and Intellectual Diversity in the Islamicate World and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Sarah Stroumsa, 72–97. Leiden: Brill, 2023.
Theme 04
Cultural brokerage & intellectual exchange
The agents and mechanisms through which texts, practices, concepts, and institutions moved across cultural settings.
Books & edited publications
Articles & chapters
2026
Introduction: Towards a Theory of Cultural Brokerage in Islamic Societies
With Luke Yarbrough. In Cultural Brokerage in Premodern Islamic Societies, 1–43. Edinburgh University Press, 2026.
2025
Cross-Religious Cultural Agency: The Liminal Features of Jewish Converts to Islam in Early ʿAbbāsid Iraq
Al-Masāq (2025): 1–25.
2011
Biblical Narrative in the Annales of Saʿīd ibn Baṭrīq
Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 22, no. 1 (2011): 37–55.
Book chapters
2015
The Selective Memory of a Byzantine Orthodox Patriarch: A Few Remarks on the Interplay of Narrative and Identity in the Annales of Saʿīd ibn Baṭrīq
In Giovanni Galizia and David Shulman (eds.), Forgetting: An Interdisciplinary Conversation, 172–184. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2015.
2013
Blessed Are the Peacemakers: An Ecclesiastical Definition of Authority in the Early Islamic Period
In David Shulman (ed.), Meditations on Authority, 101–127. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2013.
2013
Motifs of a South-Melkite Affiliation in the Annales of Saʿīd ibn Baṭrīq
In Sofía Torallas Tovar and Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (eds.), Cultures in Contact: Transfer of Knowledge in the Mediterranean Context, 243–254. Beirut: CEDRAC–Oriens Academic, 2013.
Additional scholarship
Reviews, reference works and translations
Book reviews, reference entries, and source translations.
2018
Review of Lena Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions
Islamic Law and Society 25, no. 4 (2018): 467–472.
2018
Review of Antoine Borrut and Fred M. Donner (eds.), Christians and Others in the Umayyad State
Journal of the American Oriental Society 138, no. 3 (2018): 648–652.
2016
Review of Christine Caldwell Ames, Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
Speculum 91, no. 2 (2016): 454–456.
2013
Saʿīd ibn Baṭrīq
Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Leiden: Brill Online, 2013.
2011
Saʿīd ibn Baṭrīq
In David Thomas et al. (eds.), Christian–Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. 2, 224–233. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
2018
Part One of Ishoʿbokt’s Book of Laws
Hebrew translation in Youval Rotman (ed.), A Hebrew Anthology of Syriac Writings, 96–110. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press.