Justin K Stearns

My research interests focus on the intersection of law, the natural sciences, and theology in the pre-modern Muslim Middle East. My first book was Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Pre-Modern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) and I have published articles in Islamic Law and Society, Medieval Encounters, Al-Qantara, The Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, and History Compass as well as a number of edited volumes. My book on the social status of the natural sciences in early modern Morocco entitled Revealed Sciences: The Natural Sciences in Islam in Early Modern Morocco appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2021, and the first volume of my edition and translation of al-Yusi’s (d. 1102/1691) Discourses appeared with the Library of Arabic Literature in 2020.

I also run the Moroccan Manuscript Database Research Project, which aims to create a searchable database of all catalogued Moroccan manuscripts. Work on it began in fall 2021 and will go live when we have something real to share!