Professor Jamil Abun-Nasr (1932-2021)

Professor Jamil Abun-Nasr came to St Antony’s in 1958 to read for the D.Phil. in Oriental Studies under the supervision of Albert Hourani.  Abun-Nasr and Hourani joined the college in the same year, and Jamil was one of Albert’s very first students.  He completed his thesis, “The Tijaniyya Order,” in just three years, taking his D.Phil. in 1961.  His thesis was subsequently published under the title The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 1965).  He went on to a distinguished academic career, serving as Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Bayreuth in German.  His 1971 book, A History of the Maghrib (Cambridge University Press) is recognized as a classic reference on the subject and was reissued in an expanded version in 1987.  He is also author of  Muslim Communities of Grace: The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life (Columbia University Press, 2007).  He died on 10 April 2021.

– Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of the Middle East Centre