Easa Saad
I work on the 13th-century Persian-speaking mystic and poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, focusing on how his 26,000 verse spiritual epic, the Mas̱navī-yi-Maʿnavi, employs paradox as a tool for spiritual and ethical instruction. My research challenges the rigid binary between the categories of 'literary' and 'theological' imposed on classical Islamic texts by contemporary academic classifications, and seeks to shed light on how imaginative works functioned as venues for theological and ethical discourse in the medieval Islamic world.
I began my DPhil after completing an MPhil in Islamic Studies and History, also at the University of Oxford, where I focused on Philosophical Sufism, Qur'anic Studies, and Persian literature. Prior to my MPhil, I spent several years working in the corporate sector, the charity sector, and working for Her Majesty’s Government.
My research is made possible through the Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Partnership and the Clarendon Fund, with additional awards from the E J W Gibb Memorial Trust, the Gift of Knowledge Foundation and the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies, Oxford.
