2019
M.A. in Religious Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin

2019
Visiting Graduate Student, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2014
M.A. in Philosophy, University of Amsterdam

2014
Erasmus Exchange, Free University of Berlin

2013
B.A. in Philosophy, University of Amsterdam

Science of kalam (ilm al-kalam) and Philosophy (falsafa) in Early Judeo-Arabic Thinking

My project focuses on Aristotelian logic in Jewish kalām literature. Although the names of Muslim philosophers such as al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā may come to mind first when thinking of the development of Arabic logic, works written by Jewish thinkers in (Judeo-)Arabic attest from their earliest instances a strong interest in logic too.

Central to my dissertation project are three texts: Dāwūd ibn Marwān al-Muqammaṣ’s (first half 9^th c. CE) theological summa ‘Išrūn Maqāla (Twenty Chapters); Kitāb al-Amānāt wa-l-I‘tiqādāt (The Book of Beliefs and Opinions), the main philosophical work of Rav Saadya Gaon (c. 882/892 – 942 CE); and Kitāb al-Anwār wa-l-Marāqib (The Book of Lights and Watchtowers), the major extant legal-theological work of Karaite thinker Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī (first half 10^th c. CE).

In my dissertation, I aim to shed led light on the importance of the Syriac philosophical tradition for the early reception of Aristotelian logic in the Islamicate world in general, and for works of kalām in particular. Moreover, I will show that these three authors were interested in different parts of the Aristotelian logical corpus for several reasons, chiefly among them for its employment in religious polemics and within inner-Jewish debates.

forthcoming

“Sources of Franz Rosenzweig’s Critique of Islam in Der Stern der Erlösung”in Jewish Studies Quarterly (forthcoming)