Dr. Pascal Held

• Islamic mysticism (Sufism)
• The history of the pre-modern Islamic Civilization
• Islamic Philosophy
• Shi’ism

• 2007-2016       Ph.D., University of Chicago, Near Eastern Languages and Civilization
• 2007-2010       M.A., University of Chicago, Near Eastern Languages and Civilization
• 2003-2005       M.Phil., University of Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Studies
• 1999-2002       B.A., University of Essex, History

• 2017-2021       Assistant Professor, Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations, The American University in Cairo
• 2016-2017       Departmental Lecturer in Islamic Studies, the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford

Monographs

• Passing through the dark valleys of the path: sadness, grief and sorrow in medieval Persian Sufism (submitted).
• 2026  Georges Tamer, Pascal Held & Cüneyd Yıldırım: The Book of Laws (Kitāb an-Nawāmīs) attributed to Plato: Edition, Translation and Commentary,(Leiden: Brill, 2026).
• 2022 Baghdad during the time of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, (Piscataway N.J: Gorgias Press, 2022).

Book Chapters

• 2026 „On traces of philosophical tinking in twelfth an thirteenth-Century moderate Sufism,“ Philosophy in the Islamic World in Context, (ed.) Reza Hajatpour, (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2026), 41-58.
• “Theodicy in the face of disaster: a comparison between Hans Jonas and ʿAṭṭār,” Ein anderer Gott: Quellen und Konsequenzen des Gottesbegriffs von Hans Jonas (forthcoming).
• 2022  “The Concept of Family in Islam”, The Concept of Education and the Concept of Family in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, De Gruyter (forthcoming).

Refereed Journal Articles

• 2025 “Alternative forms of mystical piety in medieval Islam: the cases of Ibn al-Jawzī and Ḥāfeẓ,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph, vol. 70, (2025) (forthcoming).
• 2022  “Ibn al-Jawzī’s critique of Sufism in Talbīs Iblīs: a re-examination,” Studia Islamica, vol. 117.1, (2022), 88-126.
• 2020 “Traces of mysticism in Ibn al-Jawzī’s thought; an examination of his Baḥr al-dumūʿ,” Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 31, (2020), 141–172.
• 2018 „Comparing the teachings of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī and Abū Madyan,” Journal of Sufi Studies, vol. 6.2, (2018), 165-189.
   

Book Reviews

• 2025 Review of Sufis in Medieval Baghdad: Agency and the Public Sphere in the Late Abbasid Caliphate, by Atta Muhammad. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists, vol. 33 (2025), 537-39.
• 2022 Review of Sacred place and sacred time in the medieval Islamic Middle East: a historical perspective, by Daniella Talmon-Heller. Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 33.1, (2022), 95–98.
• 2016 Review of The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History, by Ahmed El Shamsy. Bulletin critique des Annales islamologiques, 31, (2016), 31-32.