Jonathan Miran, PhD

Professor, GHR Minor Advisor

About

Education

Ph.D. History, Michigan State University

 

Jonathan Miran is a historian of Africa and the Islamic world. His research focuses on the social, religious, and cultural histories of Muslims in Northeast Africa, especially Ethiopia and Eritrea. He has written on a range of subjects, including Islamic pious endowments (waqf), Muslim pilgrims, enslavement and emancipation, and Islamic legal records as a source for social history in Northeast Africa and the Red Sea area. He has also developed an interest in exploring the history of the Red Sea region from a broader regional and maritime perspective that engages with translocal, transregional, and global history approaches.

Between 2018 and 2026 Prof. Miran served as General Editor of the journal Northeast African Studies. He currently serves on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals, including the Journal of Religion in Africa, Northeast African Studies,  Africa. Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche, Arabian Humanities, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, and Rivista italiana di storia internazionale. 

Research Interests

  • Social and cultural histories of Northeast Africa; Islam in Africa; Indian Ocean world; transregional/translocal history; Islamic law and society; Histories of enslavement and emancipation; Italian colonialism; Historiography, methods, sources.

Current Courses

Prof. Miran teaches courses on a range of topics related to Islamic civilization and Muslim societies, as well as cross-cultural exchanges in the Indian Ocean region.

  • HUMA 278: Islamic Civilization
  • HUMA 362/HIST 390: Islam in the Indian Ocean World (X-listed as HIST 390)
  • REL 340: Seeking Baraka: Sufis and Saints in Islam
  • REL 342: Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa (X-listed as HIST 390)
  • REL 490/HIST 490: Pilgrimage and Travel in Islam (X-listed as HIST 490)

Selected Publications

Books 

  • Enslavement and Unfreedom Across the Red Sea: Regional and Transregional Histories [“Studies in Global Slavery Series”] (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). [co-edited with Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner].
  • Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

Journal Special Issue

  • Guest Editor. “Space, Mobility, and Translocal Connections across the Red Sea Area since 1500,” Northeast African Studies 12, No.1 (2012).

Articles and Book Chapters (recent and selected)

  • “Introduction: Enslavement, Unfreedom, and Paths to Emancipation in the Red Sea Region,” in Jonathan Miran and Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner (eds.), Enslavement and Unfreedom Across the Red Sea: Regional and Transregional Histories [“Studies in Global Slavery Series”] (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). [co-authored with Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner].
  • “Defiance at Sea: Testimonies of Maritime Runaways in the Red Sea, 1900s-1910s,” in Jonathan Miran and Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner (eds.), Enslavement and Unfreedom Across the Red Sea: Regional and Transregional Histories [“Studies in Global Slavery Series”] (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
  • “Red Sea Slave Trade,” in Martin Klein (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and the Diaspora in African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2026).
  • “Islamic Legal Records and Social Histories of Muslims in Ethiopia and Eritrea,” in Uoldelul Chelati Dirar and Karin Pallaver (eds.), Africa as Method: A Handbook of Sources and Epistemologies (Singapore: Springer, 2024): 81-103.
  • “The Testamentary Waqf as an Instrument of Elite Consolidation in Early Twentieth-Century Massawa (Eritrea).” Islamic Law and Society 25, No. 1-2 (2018): 78-120. [co-authored with Aharon Layish].
  • “The Red Sea,” in David Armitage, Alison Bashford and Sujit Sivasundaram (eds.), Oceanic Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 156-181.
  • “‘Stealing the Way’ to Mecca: West African Pilgrims and Illicit Red Sea Passages, 1920s-1950s,” The Journal of African History 56, No. 3 (2015): 389-408.
  • “Mapping Space and Mobility in the Red Sea Region, c. 1500-1950,” History Compass 12, No. 2 (2014): 197-216.