Saiyad Ahmad
Visiting Associate Professor
Religious Studies
Office: DM 322B
Phone: 305-348-2186
Email: sahmad@fiu.edu
BIO
Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad is currently The Prophet Muhammad University Professor of Shia Islam Studies at Florida International University (FIU) where he holds the rank of Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. He is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, UK as well as a faculty member of Mufid Academic Seminary, Fairfax, Virginia.
Dr. Ahmad has about twenty years of teaching and research experience having served on the faculties of a number of universities and research institutes both in the US and abroad, namely the University of Texas at Austin, the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization in Kuala Lumpur, the American University of Sharjah, the American University in Cairo, and The Shīʿah Institute, London.
Dr. Ahmad has presented scholarly papers on a very wide range of subjects at some of the most renowned institutions of learning in the both East and West, namely Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the Warburg Institute (School of Advanced Study, University of London), the American University of Beirut, Institut Francais d’Egypt, and the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, Malaysia.
Degrees
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies, May 2000.
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.
MA in Arabic language and literature, February 1992.
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.
BSc in Pure Mathematics, May 1989.
Publications
1. The Way of Nobility: Knowledge of the Imam,(forthcoming, Birmingham, UK: AMI Press, 2023). This is the first complete English translation of Minhāj al-karāma fī maʿrifat al-imāma, a seminal work of Islamic theology by al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726H/1325). This is a dual-language edition that includes a critical edition of the original Arabic text and an introduction in English.
2. Philosophy and the Intellectual Life in Shīʿah Islam, edited with Sajjad H. Rizvi (London: The Shīʿah Institute Press, 2017).
3. Universal Science: An Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics, Modern Shīʿah Library Series vol. 2, by Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī (d. 1420/1999), Trans. John Cooper, edited and introduced by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2017).
4. Miʿrāj al-ʿUqūl Sharḥ Duʿāʾ al-Mashlūl (The Ascension of the Intellects Commentary on the Supplication of the Lame) by Sayyid Murtaḍā Nawnahrawī Ghāzīpūrī (d. 1336/1917), edited and introduced in Arabic English, and Urdu by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad (London: The Shīʿah Institute, 2016).
5. Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam by Muḥyī al-Dīn b. al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240): A Critical Edition of the Arabic Text with Introduction and Notes (Cairo: Maktabat Miṣr, 2015) based on the unique Konya MS 1933 (dated 630 H) dictated by the author to his disciple Ṣadr al-Dīn Qunawī (d. 672/1274), Cairo: Maktabat Miṣr, 2015).
6. Fatwās of Condemnation: Islam and the Limits of Dissent. (Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 2006).