Research Interests
Islamic law, with a primary focus on the history of Mālikī legal doctrine;
Manuscript and material culture studies;
Arabic codicology and palaeography;
Social and Cultural History of Premodern North Africa (Egypt, Maghreb);
Material History of the Premodern Mediterranean.
Research Project
My current research project, The Manuscripts of Kairouan: Material Culture of Early Muslim Scholars, investigates the materiality of Arabic manuscripts produced in the city of Kairouan (in present-day Tunisia) between the 9th and 11th centuries. By treating these manuscripts as historical artefacts, the project explores the social, intellectual, and scribal practices of early Muslim scholars — in particular, jurists associated with the Mālikī school of law, one of the major legal traditions of Sunni Islam. Drawing on codicology, palaeography, and comparative manuscript studies, I aim to reassess the book culture of premodern North Africa and its place within broader Mediterranean manuscript traditions. This research forms the core of my work as a Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford.
Biography
Born in France, I first studied Arabic and History at Sorbonne University, where I obtained two undergraduate degrees (2016), followed by a Master’s degree in Medieval Islamic History (2018). I then completed a joint PhD between Sorbonne University and the University of Lausanne (2025). My dissertation, Law and Society in Ifriqiya: The Formation and Evolution of an Islamic Legal Field (1st–4th/7th–10th centuries), examined the development of Islamic legal doctrines in early medieval Tunisia through a close analysis of unpublished Mālikī manuscripts produced in Kairouan. My research lies at the intersection of Islamic legal history, codicology and palaeography, and the social history of knowledge. In 2025, I joined The Queen’s College, Oxford, as a Junior Research Fellow in Manuscript and Text Cultures. I am currently working on a new project on the manuscript culture of premodern North Africa, with a particular focus on Kairouan and its scholarly communities. Alongside this project, I continue to explore the development of Mālikī legal thought in connection with the social history of North Africa, with particular attention to how legal texts and practices shaped, and were shaped by, their historical contexts.
Recent publications
Edited Volumes and Special Issues
- Shaping the norm: social and doctrinal development of the Mālikī maḏhab, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2024.
- Les études sur les mondes musulmans et les humanités numériques, Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2024. Co-edited with Antoine Perrier, CNRS, Paris.
Articles and Book Chapters
- “Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (m. 386/996) et la canonisation d’un droit mālikite,” Médiévales – Langues, Textes, Histoire 87 (2025): 65–86.
- “The Earliest Manuscripts of Kairouan (9th–11th Centuries): New Approaches for a More Accurate Dating” (with Umberto Bongianino), Arabica 71 (2024): 247–303.
- “L’émergence du mašhūr mālikite (IVe-VIe/Xe-XIIe siècle) : harmonisation de la
norme juridique et crise de l’autorité en Occident musulman,” in Shaping the norm: social and doctrinal development of the Mālikī maḏhab, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2024, 19–60.
- “Les études sur les mondes musulmans et les humanités numériques. Introduction” (with Antoine Perrier) in Les études sur les mondes musulmans et les humanités numériques, Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2024, 9–24.
- “Islamic Studies and Digital Humanities. Introduction” (with Antoine Perrier) Les études sur les mondes musulmans et les humanités numériques, Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2024, 25–40.
- “Enhancing Arabic Maghribi Handwritten Text Recognition with RASAM 2: A Comprehensive Dataset and Benchmarking” (with Chahan Vidal-Gorène, Noëmie Lucas, Alienor Decours-Perez, Antoine Perrier), in Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference 2024, edited by Wouter Haverals, Marijn Kooken, Laure Thompson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 200–216.
- “Ašhab b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (m. 204/820) et l’évolution du maḏhab mālikite (IIIe-
VIe/IXe-XIIe siècle),” Islamic Law and Society 30/4 (2023): 392–441.
- “Le maḏhab ḥanafite d’Ifrīqiya (IIe-IVe/VIIIe-Xe siècle) : Asad b. al-Furāt (m. 213/828) et la transmission du Kitāb al-aṣl d’al-Šaybānī (m. 189/805),” Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques 76/4 (2022): 853–921.
- “RASAM – A Dataset for the Recognition and Analysis of Scripts in
Arabic Maghrebi” (with Chahan Vidal-Gorène, Noëmie Lucas, Alienor Decours-Perez, Boris Dupin), in Documents Analysis and Recognition – ICDAR 2021 Workshops, edited by Elisa H. Barney-Smith, Umapada Pal, Springer, 2021, 265–281.
Book Reviews
- Nejmedinne Hentati, Ḥanafī Law in Ifrīqiya in the 3rd/9th Century. Asad b. al-Furāt’s Transmission of the Kitāb al-Aṣl by Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al- Shaybānī for Islamic Law and Society 31 (2024): 472–477.
- Sébastien Garnier, Histoires hafsides. Pouvoir et idéologie for the Bulletin des Annales Islamologiques 37 (2023): 88–90.
- Corisande Fenwick, Early Islamic North Africa: A New Perspective for the Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 152, 2022 (on line).
- Yasin Dutton, Early Islam in Medina. Mālik and his Muwaṭṭa’ for the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 85/1 (2022) : 124–125.
