About

Born in the United States Prof. Meri hails from a Jerusalemite family. Meri is presently a faculty member at Georgetown University, Qatar (Spring 2023) and an Associate of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University. He was a faculty member of the College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar from 2018-2023. He is also Faculty Associate (non-resident) at the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations, Merrimack College, U.S.A. until 2020 when the center closed. From 2014-2015 he was Visiting Professor in the Department of Studies of Islam in the Contemporary World at the University of Jordan. During the 2013-2014 academic year Meri served as 8th Allianz Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at the Ludwig Maximilians-University of Munich. From 2011-2014 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies, Cambridge University. From June 2010-March 2013 he was Fellow of St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge University and served as Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations, Woolf Institute, Cambridge. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East and Europe and has lived in Oxford, London, Cambridge, Munich, Amman, Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem. From 2005-2010 he lived in Amman, where he oversaw a major Qur’anic exegesis project at the Jordanian Royal Court. He previously held visiting appointments at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and the University of California at Berkeley.

Prof. Meri is a historian of interfaith relations in the Middle East in past and present, a historian of religions, and a specialist in medieval Islamic history and civilisation. Prof. Meri’s research interests include: Muslim-non-Muslim relations in the medieval and modern Middle East, Pilgrimage and the Veneration of Saints and Relics in Islam, Judaism and Christianity; Ritual in Islam and Judaism; Popular Religion; History of the Jews of Arab Lands. His teaching interests include: Ritual in Islam and Judaism; Pilgrimage in Islam and Judaism; Medieval Islamic History and Civilisation; Travel, Hajj and Ziyara; History of Sacred Places in the Middle East; the Jewish communities of the Islamic World; Bibliographic Methods in the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, Autobiographical Writings of Middle Eastern Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Prof. Meri served as Editor of the Routledge Handbook of Muslim-Jewish Relations (2016), a major academic resource for the academic study of Muslim-Jewish Relations. His publications include: (ed.) Jewish-Muslim Relations in Past and Present: A Kaleidoscopic View (Leiden: Brill, 2017), (ed.) Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (reissue with updated bibliographies and new preface) (Abingdon, Oxon. and New York: Routledge, 2017), and a new revised translation of Al-Ghazali, The Correct Balance (2019). His forthcoming publications include: Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) and A History of Interfaith Relations in the Middle East and Mediterranean (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).

He previously served as Founding Advisory Board Member (Islamic Studies), Oxford Bibliographies On-line (2008-2010), General Editor of Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia (2002-2005), Series Editor of the Great Tafsirs of the Holy Qur’an series (Fons Vitae Publishers, USA with Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Amman, Jordan)(2005-2010), Section Editor (Islam) of Wiley-Blackwell’s Religion Compass (2005-2010) and Book Review Editor (Medieval Islamic and Jewish Studies), Speculum, published by the Medieval Academy of America (2007-2012) and Founding Editor of Intertwined Worlds (2010-2013), an e-platform dedicated to the academic study of Muslim-Jewish and Muslim-Jewish-Christian Relations.