Shiraz Hajiani, PhD
I am scholar of religion and history and am an accomplished educator, researcher, mentor, and communicator with a record of teaching excellence and extensive experience in advising undergraduates, graduates, and continuing education students. I use multi-disciplinary approaches, including digital humanities methodologies, to study and teach religion, history, literature, and thought. I specialise in Islamicate history and thought, Shiʿism, Ismaili studies and with regional expertise in the study of the Middle East, North Africa, Central and South Asia
Publications and Works in Progress
Doctoral Dissertation
“Reconstructing Alamut: New Approaches to the Study of the Qiyāma and the Nizari Polity in Iran,” diss., University of Chicago, 2019. Available at: https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.1894.
Book Chapters
“Divided in Death: Boundary Formations Through Control of Funerary Customs and Ritual Space in a Khoja Community,” in Rāhē Najāt (The Path of Salvation): Religious and Social Dynamics of Mercantile Communities in the Western Indian Ocean Festschrift in Honour of Françoise Mallison. Edited by Iqbal Akhtar, Michel Boivin and Chhaya Goswami. Leiden: Brill. (Under Contract). Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
“Persianate Messianisms: Comparing Zoroastrian and Ismaili Eschatologies” in The One Awaited: Figuring the Messianic in World Religions. Edited by Kimberley C. Patton, Kurt A. Richardson, and Francis X. Clooney. New York: Columbia University Press. (Under Contract).
“The Evolving Biography of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ: a Study of Textual Fluidity and Transformation,” in Rethinking Texts and their Contexts in Muslim Societies: Interrelations between Textual Practice, Human Agency and Technological Shifts. Edited by Wafi Momin, The Institute of Ismaili Studies. London and Bloomsbury Publishing. (Under Contract). Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
Journal Articles
“Manifesto of the Resurrection: A critical edition and translation of the Hikayat-i Sayyid Nasir-i Khusraw, a newly uncovered Nizari Ismaili treatise written before the declaration of the Qiyamat-i Buzurg (the Great Resurrection) in 559/1164.” Iran (2026) (in publication process). Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
“Ḥikāyat-i Sayyid Nāṣir-i Khusraw: Analyses of a Subaltern Nizari Ismaili Text Written before the Declaration of the Qiyāmat-i Buzurg (the Great Resurrection) in 559/1164.” Iranian Studies, 2025, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.29. Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
Reference Articles
“Marshall Hodgson” in Farhad Daftary ed. Encyclopaedia of the Ismailis. Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
“Niẓām al-Mulk” in Farhad Daftary ed. Encyclopaedia of the Ismailis. Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
Book Reviews
Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Review of Sárközy, Miklós. The Early Nizārī Ismailis and Their Neighbouring Powers: Politics in the Caspian Provinces. pp. xvi, 240. London: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2024. JNES 85, no. 1 (2026): 200–3. Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
Shii Studies Review. Review of Aga Khan, Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh, and Mīrzā Aḥmad Viqār-i Shīrāzī. The First Aga Khan: Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam: a Persian edition and English translation of the ʿIbrat-afzā of Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Ḥusaynī, also known as Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh. Edited and translated by Daniel Beben, and Daryoush Mohammad Poor. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2018. pp. xxviii, 150 (English), 87 (Persian). (In publication process). Link to prepublication draft—please refer to the published text in your work.
Works in Progress
Qiyāmat-i Buzurg (The Great Resurrection): A study of Transcendence and Transformation in Nizari Ismaili Soteriology and Eschatology.
Annotated Translation from Persian of the Account of the Ismailis in the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles) of Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh (d. 1318) Book Project Completion Target 2028
Russian Émigré, Chicago Gangster and the Assassins: Tumultuous Correspondence between Two Field-defining Twentieth Century Scholars and their contributions to Islamic Studies to be presented at Scholarly Correspondences Among Orientalists during the Early and Late Modern Period as a Historical Source: A Series of Lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University. Spring 2024
Digital Humanities at the End of the World: Methodology and Workflows in the Study of Islamic History and Eschatology
Islam in Tajikistan: State Control of Religion and Identity in the Public Sphere