The history of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study dates back to 1935, and it is the one area of scholarship that has been continuously represented at the Institute ever since, encompassing all four schools—Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Historical Studies, and Social Science. The volume opens with a historical sketch of the study of the Near and Middle East at the Institute, discussing luminaries such as Ernst Herzfeld, Henri Seyrig, Ernst Kantorowicz, Otto Neugebauer, Marshall Clagett, Clifford Geertz, Bernard Lewis, Glen Bowersock, Oleg Grabar, and Patricia Crone and their respective impact on the field. The second part of the volume, “Fruits of Scholarship,” consists of essays and short studies by IAS scholars, past and present—faculty, members, and visitors; mathematicians, social scientists, and historians—who are engaged in one way or another with the Near and Middle East in their scholarship. Their contributions cover fields such as the ancient Near East and early Islamic history, the Bible and the Qurʾān, Islamic intellectual history within and beyond denominational history, Arabic and other Semitic languages and literatures, Islamic religious and legal practices, law and society, the Islamic West, the Ottoman world, Iranian studies, the modern Middle East, and Islam in the West.
