Academic Bio
Dr Belal Alabbas is a historian of Islamic intellectual and legal thought (7th – 15th centuries) and his research focuses on the hadith corpus, hermeneutics, and Islamic law in the formative and classical periods. He graduated from Al-Azhar University with a degree in religious studies and completed his DPhil in History of the Islamicate World at the University of Oxford. He previously held lectureships at the University of Nottingham and the University of Bristol and was a British Academy International Fellow at the University of Exeter.
Education
- DPhil, the University of Oxford
- B.A., Al-Azhar University, Cairo
Research Interest
- The Hadith corpus and its literature
- Islamic legal theory and hermeneutics
- The formation of Islamic legal and theological schools
Select Publications
Alabbas B., Al-Bukhārī: The Life, Theology and Legal Thought of Islam’s Foremost Traditionist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2026). Access here
Alabbas, “Classical Sunni Hadith Scholarship: The Age of al-Bukhārī and his Contemporaries” in The Oxford Handbook of Hadith Studies, ed. Mustafa Shah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).
Alabbas B., Melchert C., Dann M., Modern Hadith Studies: Continued Debates and New Approaches (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, August 2020). Access here
Alabbas, “The Principles of Hadith Criticism in the Writings of al-Shāfiʿī and Muslim”, Islamic Law and Society 24:4 (2017), pp. 311-335. Access here
Recent & Regularly Taught Courses
- Islamic History (BA Islamic Studies)
- Hadith Studies and Literature (BA Islamic Studies)
- Spiritual Discipline and Ethics