Shatha Almutawa
2nd year PhD in History of Judaism, University of Chicago Divinity School
BA - Mount Holyoke College
MA - University of Chicago Divinity School
I am pursuing a Ph.D. in History of Judaism at the Divinity School. My project is on the influence of Ikhwan al-Safa, or the Brethren of Purity, on medieval Neoplatonic Jewish thought. The Rasa'il, or epistles, of the Ikhwan were written in Arabic in the tenth century and were important philosophical and scientific works throughout the medieval period. Little scholarship has been done on this topic, and these along with many other obscure medieval Arabic texts of great significance remain untranslated into English and under-utilized in research on Jewish thought and history.
Professor James Robinson, my advisor, encouraged me to utilize my background, especially my knowledge of Arabic, in my study of Judaism in general, and particularly in his class "The Jews in Medieval Spain." Since much of the information we have today on medieval Jewish thinkers, for example Moses Maimonides, comes to us from the Arabic tabaqat (biographical) literature, which I had used extensively in my work for Professor Barbara von Schlegell at the University of Pennsylvania, I decided to look for other Jews in the same sources. I had three reasons for believing that I would find interesting accounts of Jews in the tabaqat: First, I quickly found biographical entries on Hasday ibn Shaprut and Samuel ibn Nagrella in the tabaqat, but their biographies were already translated into English. Second, I saw many biographies of Christians, Zoroastrians and others in the tabaqat, which led me to believe that I would also find many Jews. Third, Sa'id Al-Andalusi, in his Tabaqat al-Umam, devotes an entire chapter to Jewish scientists (The book was translated in 1996 as Science in the Medieval World by Semaan Salem and Alok Kumar). After months of searching in volumes and volumes of more than 20 different biographical dictionaries from the medieval period, I realized that I was wrong. Even though there were clear instances of books and chapters where some Jews should have been included, they did not appear there. With very few exceptions, the only Jews that make it in the tabaqat are the physicians who either worked in the courts of Muslim rulers or wrote works that influenced Arabic medicine.
For Professor Robinson's class "Interactions between Jewish Philosophy and Literature in the Middle Ages," I turned my attention to the genre of the epistle or treatise which was adapted from the Arabic to the Hebrew literary tradition. Our reading for class of the English translation of the Hebrew translation of the Arabic "Epistle on Animals" from Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa made me wonder why this treatise, out of 51 treatises in the same book, was picked out for translation, even though the writings of the Ikhwan were important to most of medieval Neoplatonic Jewish philosophy. Since the Rasa'il have not yet been translated into English, I decided to translate four sections of the "Epistle on Ethics" from the same book, an endeavor which involved learning about medieval Muslim philosophy and medicine, Greek philosophy and medicine, and Muslim history.
As I wrote on the Ikhwan and translated sections from their Epistles I found many questions that I would like to research: What are the sources that the Ikhwan used in writing their Rasa'il? Why were they so influential in medieval philosophy? How exactly did they influence Jewish thought, especially in the work of Solomon ibn Gabirol, Bahya ibn Paquda, Judah Halevi, Moses ibn Ezra and Abraham ibn Ezra? Why are the Ikhwan considered more tolerant towards Judaism, when, in fact, they have written polemically against the Jews? Answering these questions would help us better understand Jewish philosophy, and especially the original contributions of individual Jewish thinkers.
My paper "On the Status of Women in the United Arab Emirates" was published in the book Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Citizenship and Justice (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005). This is the first report ever to be published examining the different aspects of women's freedom in the U.A.E.
I am currently a lector for the course Academic and Professional Writing offered by the English Department and the University's Writing Program. In the spring and summer of 2005 I taught Arabic to graduate students in the linguistics and psychology lab at the University.
I am looking forward to becoming a professor! Besides Jewish and Muslim philosophy and history, I would love to teach a survey course on philosophy of religion (which was one of my favorite courses in college), courses on gender and religion, and on Arabic and Jewish literatures of resistance.
I host a radio show called Conversations with Arab Activists, a bi-weekly talk show on the University of Chicago radio station WHPK. I speak with Arabs and Arab Americans who are fighting for human rights, women's issues, and freedom of religion and the press peacefully and creatively, especially through art, theatre, dance and music. The show runs on alternate Wednesdays from 3 to 4 pm Central Time.
I've held interviews with Heather Raffo, Iraqi-American actress and playwrite of Nine Parts of Desire; Nayla from NaR, a queer Lebanese-American rap and hip hop group; Jamil Khoury, Syrian-American director of the Silk Road Theatre Project in Chicago; the Iraqi acitivist Raed Jarrar; and the lawyer of three Guantanamo Bay detainees, among others.