Prof Andrew Peacock

Prof Andrew Peacock

Bishop Wardlaw Professor

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3083
Email
acsp@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Room 6a
Location
United Colleges
Office hours
8.30-9.30am Friday morning, and by appointment.

 

Biography

Andrew Peacock studied Arabic and Persian at the University of Oxford before taking a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has previously worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and as Assistant Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. He has also held visiting appointments at the University of Malaya and the Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul. 

Research areas

Andrew Peacock works on the history and intellectual culture of the pre-modern Islamic world, using sources in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Malay. His research and teaching encompasses the Arab Middle East, Anatolia, Iran, Central Asia and the Indian Ocean world from the 7th to 19th centuries. He has a particular interest in Islamic manuscripts and epigraphy. Themes of his research include Islamisation and relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in history, Arabic and Persian historical and advice literature, the impact of steppe peoples such as Turks and Mongols on the Middle East and Central Asia, and intellectual connections between different parts of the Islamic world as reflected in manuscripts.  His most recent book, Arabic Literary Culture in Southeast Asia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, examining a hitherto unknown aspect of Arabic literature, was awarded the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2025, and he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022.

He was Principal Investigator of a major European Research Council funded project The Islamisation of Anatolia which examined the transformation of Christian Anatolia into a Muslim-dominated society between c. 1100 and 1500 on the basis of previously unstudied manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and Turkish.

He currently directs a research project Persian Manuscripts East and West studying the ways by which collections of Islamic manuscripts in the UK were acquired, addressing the colonial connection of the discipline of Islamic studies in the UK.

Selected major publications (for more detail see academia.edu):

Arabic Literary Culture in Southeast Asia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden, 2024)

The Memoirs of Shah Tahmasp I, Safavid Ruler of Iran (London, 2024; translated from the Persian)

Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia (Cambridge, 2019)

(ed.), Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History (Edinburgh, 2017)

The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh, 2015)

Early Seljuq History: A new interpretation (London, 2010)

Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy (London, 2007)

He welcomes applications from prospective doctoral students interested in the history, literature or intellectual culture of the Islamic world in premodern times.

Recently supervised PhD theses:

M. Czarnuszewicz, “Beyond the City: Seljuq rule and textual production in the Central Deserts of Iran”

R. Alheem, “The Courtly Zuhdiyya: Comparative Themes in Abu'l-'Atahiyya's Poetic Discourse”

J. Hagedorn, “Domestic Slavery in the Medieval Middle East”

R. Halaseh, “The Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Qurʾān Manuscript H.S. 32: Its History, Text, and Variants”

M. AlJumaiaan, “The Qarāmiṭa of Baḥrayn: Their Origins, Socio-Political Development and Relationship with the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate (AH 273–375 / 886–985 CE)”

W. Xu, "Factional Politics in Early Safavid Iran: Political Networks and the Negotiation of the Shāh, the Qizilbāsh Amīrs and the Local Notables (1501-1555)"

PhD supervision

  • Ali Shapouran

Selected publications

 

See more publications