Dissertation Prize

Mamluk Studies Resources

The Middle East Documentation Center at The University of Chicago

The Bruce D. Craig Prize for Mamluk Studies

The Bruce D. Craig Prize, was an annual award given by Mamluk Studies Review for the best dissertation on a topic substantially focused on the Mamluk Sultanate submitted in English to any university during the preceding calendar year. In years when no dissertations were submitted, or none was deemed to merit the prize, no prize was awarded.

Previous Prize Winners

2004: Tamer el-Leithy, Princeton University, "Coptic Culture and Conversion in Medieval Cairo: 1293-1524."

2005: Zayde G. Antrim, Harvard University, "Place and Belonging in Medieval Syria, 6th/12th to 8th/14th Centuries."

2006: Nahyan A. G. Fancy, University of Notre Dame, "Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection: The Interaction of Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in the Works of Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288)."

2011*: Nathan C. Hofer, Emory University, "Sufism, State, and Society in Ayyubid and Early Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1309"

2011*: Matthew B. Ingalls, Yale University, "Subtle Innovation Within Networks of Convention: The Life, Thought, and Intellectual Legacy of Zakariyya al- Ansari (d. 926/1520)"

2012: Elias Ibrahim Muhanna, Harvard University, "Encyclopaedism of the Mamluk Period: The Composition of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī’s (d. 1333) Nihāyat al-Arab fī Funūn al-Adab"

2013: No prize was awarded.

2014: Noah Gardiner, University of Michigan, “Esotericism in a manuscript culture: Ahmad al-Buni and his readers through the Mamluk period”

*Given the outstanding quality of the two dissertations submitted for the 2011 prize, the Committee unanimously decided to award it jointly to the two candidates.