Adam Gaiser

Assistant Professor of Religion   Departmental Area: History and Ethnography of Religions Research Areas : Islamic Studies; Islamic Sectarianism; Kharijites; Ibadites; Martyrdom; Islamo-Christian convergence Address: 303 University Way P.O. Box 6061520 Florida State University Tallahassee, FL 32306 Office: M07 Dodd Hall Email: agaiser@fsu.edu Office Hours: By Appointment Curriculum Vitae

Background 

Adam Gaiser (Ph.D. ’05, University of Virginia, History of Religions) teaches courses in Islamic studies.  His research focuses on the development of early Islamic sectarian identity among the Kharijites and Ibadiyya in the context of Arabian and Mesopotamian cultural-religious settings, and encompasses political, intellectual and military forms of expression.  His research is heading in the direction of inter and intra-religious convergence, borrowing and continuity, especially among early Eastern Christian and Islamic sectarian movements.  Dr. Gaiser nurtures an additional interest in Islam in an American context. 

Research Interests 

• Early Islamic Sectarianism: Kharijites, Ibadites and Shi‘ites
• Islamic and Eastern Christian Conceptions of Martyrdom
• Convergence and borrowing between Eastern Christianity and Islam
• Islam in Europe and the Americas

 

Current Research Projects 

Books 

• When Our Heads Lie in Dust Like Rotten Melons: Kharijite Martyrdom Narratives in Early Islamic Iraq

 

Abstract: This project compares the martyrdom literature of the early Iraqi Christians to that of the Kharijites and Ibadites, and establishes connections between the concept of shira` or “selling” [oneself to God], and the large volume of martyrdom texts that developed after the fourth century CE persecutions of Christians in the Sassanian empire.   

Publications 

Books 

• Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The Origin and Elaboration of the Ibadi Imamate Traditions (Oxford, forthcoming)

 

Articles 

• “The Ibādī ‘Stages of Religion’ Re-examined: Tracing the History of the Masālik al-Dīn,” in Journal of the School of Oriental and African Studies (forthcoming)

 

• “Source-Critical Methodologies in Recent Scholarship on the Khārijites,” in Historical Compass (forthcoming)

 

• "Ibādī Dynasty," in Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.  Edited by John Esposito. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming)

 

• “Satan’s Seven Specious Arguments: al-Shahrastānī’s Kitāb al-Milal wa’l-Nihal in an Ismā‘īlī Context,” in Journal of Islamic Studies 19/2, 2008, p. 178-195

 

Teaching Specializations 

 

• History of Islam
• Islamic Sectarianism
• Islam in Europe and North America

 

Recent Courses 

Spring 2009 

• RELS 3367 Islamic Traditions II: Islam in the Modern World
• RELS 5305 Seminar on Shi‘ism