Paul M. Cobb

Director, Middle East CenterEdmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures

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Paul M. Cobb is a social and cultural historian of the pre-modern Islamic world. He has been teaching at Penn since 2008. His areas of interest include Islamic relations with the West, Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations, animal studies, and travel and exploration. He is, in particular, a recognized authority on the history of the medieval Crusades in their Islamic context. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including White Banners: Contention in ‘Abbasid Syria, 750-880 (SUNY Press, 2001); Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior-Poet of the Age of Crusades (Oneworld, 2005); The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades, a translation of the “memoirs” and other works of Usama ibn Munqidh (Penguin Classics, 2008), and most recently, The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is also the co-editor (with Wout van Bekkum) of Strategies of Medieval Communal Identity: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Peeters, 2003) and (with Antoine Borrut) of Umayyad Legacies: History and Memory from Syria to Spain (E. J. Brill, 2010).