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Dr. Ahmed Mohamed M.Abdelkawy Sheir

Research Fellow (Near & Middle Eastern Studies)

 sheira@tcd.ie

 


Biography

Ahmed Sheir is a Postdoc Research Fellow in the pre-modern sociocultural history of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the ERC-funded Project "Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah", Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies. He is also an affiliated Fellow at the Islamic Studies Department, CNMS, University of Marburg, Germany. Ahmed studied history at Alexandria University, Egypt. In 2014, He graduated with a master's degree in medieval history with joint supervision between Georg-August University of Göttingen (Germany) and Damanhour University (Egypt). He then completed a PhD in History, funded by the Jameel Scholarship Fund Program, at the Philipps-University of Marburg, Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS), Germany, in 2021. His dissertation focused on historicising the Crusading-Muslim Encounter through the Prester John Legend and its Eastern-Latin Entanglements during the 12th and 13th centuries. After completing his dissertation, he held a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung at CNMS Philipps-University of Marburg in 2021. Before joining TCD, he also taught courses and seminars on the history of the crusades, medieval Islamic-Christian relations, Islamic history, the Mongols and European-Islamic relations, and Gulf history, among other subjects. Ahmed's research interests include; 1) sociocultural history through myth, literature and folklore; 2) pre-modern Jewish-Christian-Muslim interrelationships across the Mediterranean and the Middle East through the Geniza documents; 3) history, historiography and memory of the crusades and Islamic Jihad in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Research Projects

 Sociocultural relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Premodern Mediterranean and the Middle East through Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah

Ahmed M A Sheir, The Prester John Legend between East and West during the Crusades. Entangled Eastern-Latin Mythical Legacies, Trivent publishing, 2022, 1 - 367pp, Notes: [This book considers the history of the Prester John legend and its impact on the Crusades, investigating its entangled mythical history between East and West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The present study thus responds to the still pressing need for a comprehensive historical investigation of the twelfth and thirteenth crusading history of the legend and its impact on the Muslim-Crusader encounters, examining various Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic accounts. It further reflects on new eastern aspects of the legend, presenting a new Arab scholarly view. This book first charts a pre-history of the legend in the late ancient Christian prophecy of the Last Emperor down to the emergence of the legend in the mid-twelfth century. Second, the work presents a historical discussion of the legend and its association with actual occurrences in the Far East and the Levant, analysing the legend history under the crusading crisis and the imperial papal schism in Europe. Meanwhile, the work considers the vague Prester John Letter addressed to Manuel I Komnenus, Byzantine Emperor, and its elaborate conception of a mythical eastern kingdom, revealing imaginative parallels on the wondrous East and legendary Eastern Christian kings in Arabic Muslim and Christian accounts of the Muslim geographer and cartographer al-Idrīsī, the Coptic Ābū al-Makārim and the Syriac Ibn al-ʿIbrī (Bar Hebraeus), among others. Moreover, the book examines how the legend impacted war and peace processes between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the Fifth Crusade against Egypt (1217-1221), revealing how it was mingled with Arabic and Eastern Christian prophecies at the time. The study concludes by investigating the perception of Prester John by the papal and European envoys to the Mongols in the thirteenth century, revealing how the legend was instrumentalised (and even weaponised) to establish a Latin-Mongol crusade through a parallel exploration of relevant Latin, Arabic and Syriac sources.], Book, PUBLISHED  URL
Between the Downfall of Edessa and the Capture of Damietta: How the Glamour of the Prester John Legend Influenced the Crusader-Muslim Conflict, (539-618 AH / 1144-1221 AD) in, editor(s)Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen and Kurt Villads Jensen , Legacies of the Crusades. Outremer 11, Turnhout, Brepols , 2021, pp47 - 71, [Ahmed M Sheir ], Notes: [It is important to study not only the political-military history of the crusades but also the history of thought and culture behind the conflict, as well as the anthropology and mythology of the times. This article thus measures the impact of the legend on the hostility, and the détente that marked the relationships between the Muslims and the crusaders, from the downfall of Edessa to "Imād al-Dín Zengi, Atabeg of Mosul, in 1144 up to the Fifth Crusade and the Capture of the Egyptian city Damietta 1217-1221. It also strives to discover the extent to which the legend shaped real events - in both the Latin West and East − and played a crucial role in forging the conflict between the Muslims and the crusaders. The article seeks to examine the Latin-Crusader perception of the future king from the Far East in the figure of Prester John and how the Muslims perceived the advance of such a king through the Oriental Muslim lands. Furthermore, the impact of the legend on the peace negotiations between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the Fifth Crusade will be examined.], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  URL
Aly Elsayed, Abdallah Al-Naggar, Ahmed M. Sheir , Studies in Peace-building History between East and West through the Middle Ages and Modern Era, CNR-Italy & ASRT-Egypt, Sanabil Bookshop,, 2019, 1 - 213pp, Notes: [This book is the second volume of the CNR-Italy & ASRT-Egypt bilateral project of Peacebuilding history: peaceful relations between East and West ( 11th-15th century).], Book, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Ahmed M Sheir , ʿAmr Munīr: Miṣr fī al-āsāṭīr al-ʿarabiiyah (Egypt in Arabian Myths), Review of Miṣr fī al-āsāṭīr al-ʿarabiiyah, by ʿAmr Munīr , Middle East - Topics & Arguments, vol. 13, 2019, p103-107 , Review, PUBLISHED  URL