Dr. Mohamed Ahmed
Al Maktoum Associate Professor, Near & Middle Eastern Studies
Biography
Dr. Mohamed A. H. Ahmed is an Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and a leading scholar in the field of Arabic poetry in the Cairo Genizah. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of Research for the School, having also undertaken the role of Acting Director of Research. His career is dedicated to establishing new frontiers in Middle Eastern studies, utilizing complex manuscript discoveries to reveal the hidden literary and linguistic worlds of the medieval and pre-modern time. A core pillar of Dr. Ahmed's scholarship is his extensive research into bilingualism between Hebrew and Arabic. His expertise spans the sociolinguistic variation between the two languages, the typology of written code-switching, and the dynamics of script-switching in both Modern Hebrew and medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts. This profound interest in cross-linguistic cultural exchange is reflected in his acclaimed monographs, notably Arabic in Modern Hebrew Texts: The Stylistics of Exophonic Writing (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and Iraqi Jews: From Baghdad to Exile (EMDCO Press, 2018). As a proven leader of high-impact international research, Dr. Ahmed is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project, "Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah" (2020-2026). In this capacity, he successfully managed an interdisciplinary international team and supervised postdoctoral researchers, while also developing open-access digital humanities resources like the online index of Arabic poetry in the Cairo Genizah. His current ERC leadership builds upon a remarkable trajectory of securing highly competitive, externally funded grants, including a DFG Fellowship (2017-2020) hosted by the University of Cambridge and the Woolf Institute, and a Thyssen Foundation Fellowship (2015-2017), hosted by Berlin Free University. Dr. Ahmed is a prolific author with a publication record that includes five monographs and edited volumes (including three forthcoming), alongside over 25 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has major forthcoming collaborative works under contract with Brill, including a landmark volume on Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah. His standing in the field is further evidenced by his role as an invited reviewer for top-tier journals such as the Journal of Semitic Studies (Oxford University Press). Prior to his tenure at Trinity College Dublin, Dr. Ahmed served as a Research Associate at the Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library and as a Visiting Researcher at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. His strong academic foundation began at Mansoura University, Egypt, where he earned his BA in Oriental Languages in 2004, and his MA in Semitic Languages in 2010 (graded Excellent). He subsequently secured a highly competitive DAAD scholarship to complete his PhD at Leipzig University (Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture) in 2015. His doctoral dissertation, Arabic Use of the Iraqi Jewish Novelists: A Stylistic Analysis of Selected Early and Late Hebrew Novels, laid the critical groundwork for his ongoing, internationally recognized research into Hebrew-Arabic bilingualism.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Judaeo-Arabic Documents Intercepted in the Year 1800: Prize Papers on Three Algerian Jews and the Ship 'Venus'., Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Leiden:, Brill, 2028, -
Arabic Clerical Letters in the Prize Papers Collections, Dr Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Leiden:, Brill, 2027, -
Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah, Mohamed A. H. Ahmed & Dr Ben Outhwaite (Cambridge), Brill, 2027, -
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah Documents: A Comparative Historical Study" (in Arabic), Ostour, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2026
Between Literature, History, and Anthropology Fragments of Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah, Mohamed A. H. Ahmed Ahmed Sheir, a special issue (in Arabic and English) on the Cairo Genizah for Ostour, Doha, Ostour, 2026, [Mohamed A. H. Ahmed]
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed & Sally Abed, Cultural Insights from Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah, Review of Middle East Studies, 2026
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Between Literature, History, and Anthropology Fragments of Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah, 1st May 2025, 2026, TCD, Mohamed A. H. Ahmed Ahmed Sheir, Ostour, (Special Issue)
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed Sally Abed(ed.), Anthropology of Texts: Crossroads and Connections, The Review of Middle East Studies (RoMES)., TCD, (Special Issue), 1 - 2 August 2024, Cambridge University Press, 2026
Mohamed Ahmed, Ben Outhwaite, Bilingualism and Script-Switching in a Poet"s Notebook from the Genizah, Zutot, 2025, p1 - 14, p1-14
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Review of Arab Traders in Their Own Words: Merchant Letters from the Eastern Mediterranean Around 1800, by Boris Liebrenz , Journal of Semitic Studies, 69, (2), 2024, p42-44
Six Leaves of the Arabic Kalila wa-Dimna in Hebrew Characters in, editor(s)Nick Posegay , Magdalen M. Connolly , and Ben Outhwaite , From the Battlefield of Books: Essays Celebrating 50 Years of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Leiden, Brill, 2024, pp187-190 , [Mohamed A. H. Ahmed]
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Kalila wa-Dimna: T-S Ar.6.321 part of the Arabic book Kalila wa Dimna, story nine, 2021, -
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, 18th century Egyptian Clerical Letters in the Prize-Papers Collection, 2021
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Egyptian Arabic Proverbs in the Cairo Genizah, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, Brill, 12, (2), 2021, p115-130
RYLANDS GENIZAH COLLECTION A 803 (1825) in, editor(s)Esther-Miriam Wagner , A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp365-369 , [Esther-Miriam Wagner & Mohamed A. H. Ahmed]
A Christian Mercantile Letter from the Prize Papers Collections (1759) in, editor(s)Esther-Miriam Wagner , A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp267 - 274, [Wagner, Esther-Miriam, and Mohamed A. H. Ahmed]
A CLERICAL LETTER BY RAFAEL AL-TUKHI FROM THE PRIZE PAPERS COLLECTIONS (1758) in, editor(s)Esther-Miriam Wagner , A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic, Open Book Publishers, 2021, pp261-265 , [Esther-Miriam Wagner & Mohamed A. H. Ahmed]
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed & Rania Rawhy, The Linguistic Features of the Introduction to Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah (in Arabic)), Al-Abhath, 67, (1), 2020, p155-172
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, 18th-Century Judeo-Arabic Documents from the Prize Papers Collection, Journal of Jewish Languages, 2020, p1-23
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, From a lost book of Egyptian proverbs: T-S Ar.13.13, 2019, -
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Arabic in Modern Hebrew Texts: The Stylistics of Exophonic Writing, Edinburgh University Press, 2019
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, A Lexicological Study of Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic in Iraqi Hebrew Novels, 2019
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, A North African Judaeo-Arabic letter from the Prize Papers Collection, Astarté. Estudios del Oriente Próximo y el Mediterráneo, 2, 2019, p121-130
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Iraqi Jews: From Baghdad to Exile [in Arabic], Cairo: EMDCO Press, Cairo, EMDCO Press, 2018
Ahmed, Mohamed, Judaeo-Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah: T-S Ar.37.127, 2018, -
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, Codes across languages: On the translation of literary code-switching, Multilingua, 2018
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, An Initial Survey of Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah, Al-Masaq, 2018
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, A Dictionary of Medieval Judeo-Arabic: In the India Book Letters from the Geniza and in Other Texts, Journal of Jewish Studies, 2018
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, XML Annotation of Hebrew Elements in Judeo-Arabic Texts, Journal of Jewish Languages, 2018
Wagner, Miriam and Ahmed, Mohamed, T-S Ar. 51.86a: Shiâ~ite and Karaite â" a Fatimid melange, 2017, -
Esther-Miriam Wagner & Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, From Tuscany to Egypt: Eighteenth Century Arabic Letters in the Prize Paper Collections, Journal of Semitic Studies, 2017
Two Languages, One Text: Cultural Translation in Iraqi Jewish Fiction in, editor(s)A. Engelhardt et al. (eds.) , Ein Paradigma der Moderne, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprech, 2016, pp221 - 235, [Mohamed A. H. Ahmed]
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, Arabic Codes in Hebrew Texts: On the Typology of Literary Code-switching, Journal of Jewish Languages, 2016
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed & Ashraf Al-Sharkawy, TEL AVIV MIZRAH: The potential of Iraqi cultural identity within two generations, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 14, (3), 2015, p430 - 445
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Hebrew and Arabic in Contact: Deviation and Interference in Iraqi Jewish Fiction, Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos. Sección Hebreo, 63, 2014, p11 - 25
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, Lital Levy, Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press 2014, xiii, 337 pp., 2014
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, Moshe Behar/Zvi Ben-Dor Benite (eds.), Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought. Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture, 1893\textendash1958, Waltham, Mass. : Brandeis University Press 2013, ca. 280 pp., 2013
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Main themes in the literary works of Iraqi Jewish novelists., Journal of Faculty of Arts-Mansoura University, 46, (1), 2010, p979 - 1010
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Sally Abed & Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, Loss and Alienation in Arabic Poetry from the Cairo Genizah, Between the Personal and the Public: Representations of Crisis in the Cairo Geniza Fragments, in the International Congress on the Study of the Middle Ages, Leeds University, 1st - 4th July 2024, 2024
(ed.), The Cairo Genizah and the Preservation of Egyptian Cultural Heritage, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, 28th " 29th February, 2024
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, 'Hidden Literature', Dublin, Scotland, UAE, Spain, USA, 2022, -
Mohamed Al-Temawy, 'Exit in Five Days (in Arabic)', 1st, Abu Dhabi, Thaqafa, 2022, -
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, 'Wasaya Al-Tufan (Poetry Collection in Arabic)', Cairo, Al-Said, 2021, -
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, 'Nurani Stork (Novel in Arabic)', Dubai, Thaqafa Publishing House, 2020, -
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, 'Ghurbat Al-Sufi (Poetry Collection in Arabic)', Cairo, Rawafed, 2018, -
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, Likourna: The Story of the Lost Letters, 2018, -
Mohamed A. H. Ahmed, 'Likorna (Novel in Arabic)', Dubai, Thaqafa Publishing House, 2018, -
Mohamed Ali Hussein Ahmed, My Pala Mother Tongue, 2016
Research Expertise
Description
Dr. Ahmed's primary research agenda centers on recovering the marginalized literary and social histories of the pre-modern Middle East. He is the Principal Investigator of the groundbreaking European Research Council (ERC) project 'Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah' (2020-2026). Through this flagship initiative, he spearheads an international research team dedicated to making the entirety of Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic poetry within the Genizah fully accessible to global scholars and the public via a comprehensive database and definitive critical editions. By utilizing poetry as a historical lens, Dr. Ahmed's research pioneers new approaches to uncovering the hidden socio-cultural dynamics of Jewish communities in the Middle East. His work reveals the complex realities of historical literacy, education, intercommunal relations, and the nuanced social functions of poetry within the hierarchies of medieval and early modern Egypt. Expanding his archival focus across the Mediterranean, Dr. Ahmed is a leading authority on the Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic documents preserved in the UK National Archives' Prize Papers Collection. Supported by a DFG (German Research Foundation) Fellowship (2017-2020), his project "From Tuscany to Alexandria" systematically explored these highly significant maritime archives. He is currently producing comprehensive editions of clerical Arabic letters within the collection under contract with Brill. Building upon major archival discoveries, Dr. Ahmed is currently producing the first comprehensive critical edition, translation, and linguistic analysis of previously unexplored 18th-century Algerian Judaeo-Arabic letters from the Prize Papers. This landmark volume, currently under contract with Brill, offers an unprecedented window into the socio-economic history, linguistic realities, and expansive trans-regional networks of Jewish merchants operating across North Africa, Italy and the broader Mediterranean basin. Underpinning Dr. Ahmed's archival discoveries is a profound methodological expertise in historical sociolinguistics and Hebrew-Arabic bilingualism. This theoretical framework was significantly advanced during his Thyssen Foundation postdoctoral fellowship (2016-2017) at Freie Universität Berlin, where he investigated the mechanics of code-switching in religious, secular, and philosophical Judaeo-Arabic texts. Today, his research continues to interrogate the phenomena of mixed-language texts, written code-switching, and script-switching.Projects
- Title
- Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah
- Summary
- Poetry enjoys a special place in Arabic culture and literature. For centuries, Arabs of all faiths have considered poetry a key source for knowledge, intellectuality and wisdom. In the pre-Islamic era, poetry was considered as `the Arab knowledge" and `the Arab cultural archive", in which the social and cultural history, language, arts, music, religious and Arab"s human experience were stored and preserved. Being a part of Arabic culture, Jews of Arab lands equally enjoyed writing and reading poetry. APCG will investigate for the first time a hitherto neglected collection of Arabic poetry fragments written in Hebrew script (in Judaeo-Arabic), which has been preserved in arguably the most important Jewish treasure trove: the Cairo Genizah. The fragments, numbered in the hundreds, constitute a unique source for understanding medieval and Early Modern Egypt from three main perspectives: Arabic studies, Jewish social and cultural studies, and anthropological studies. The core aims of the project are: " to make the entirety of Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic poetry in the Cairo Genizah accessible to both academic scholars and to the public in a comprehensive database and in critical editions; " to reveal, through the study of poetry, hitherto hidden aspects of social and cultural history of the Jews in the Middle East with regard to literacy, education and intercommunal relations; " to explore hierarchies, interpersonal relationships and the social function of poetry in medieval and early modern Egypt through the study of Genizah poetry. To achieve the planned main objectives, APCG carries out a thorough interdisciplinary study of Genizah"s Arabic poetry. This approach involves research from philological, linguistic, literary, historical and anthropological perspectives.
- Funding Agency
- ERC
- Date From
- 01-JUL-2020
- Date To
- 30-JUN-2026
- Title
- From Tuscany to Alexandria: Arabic and Hebrew letters in the Prize Paper Collections, hoated by Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge/ UK.
- Summary
- From Tuscany to Alexandria: Arabic and Hebrew mercantile letters in the Prize Paper collections The Prize Paper Collections in the National Archives in Kew Gardens contain a sack full of business letters in Arabic and Hebrew script, which were seized in 1759 by British seafarers as part of the loot on a Venetian ship bound for Alexandria. Virtually untouched since that time " most of the letters are still unopened and have been since they were archived in the 18th-century " they present a most exciting opportunity to investigate the interaction between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim merchants across borders in the 18th-century Mediterranean. The letters, numbering in the dozens, are particularly valuable as very little comparative material in Arabic script from that period is known and virtually nothing has been edited and published on the topic. Traders make an extremely important subject for studies on historical interfaith relations for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it is usually business activity that creates the only opportunity for people of different faiths to meet in a neutral place and work for a common benefit. Commerce therefore really establishes an arena in which people deal with each other regardless of their respective religious background. Secondly, being part of a community of merchants also provides a facet of identity to people that may become as important as their religious identity. Merchants therefore often feel as much part of a perceived community of traders as they see themselves as Jews, Muslims or Christians.
- Funding Agency
- DFG, Germany ( 147600)
- Date From
- 01-FEB-2017
- Date To
- January 2020
- Title
- "Code-switching in Religious, Secular and Philosophic Judaeo-Arabic Texts". Hosted by Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
- Funding Agency
- Thyssen Stiftung Fellowship ( 24000)
- Title
- Arabic Use of the Iraqi Jewish Novelists, hosted by Leipzig University/ Germany.
- Funding Agency
- DAAD PhD Scholarship ( 81800)
- Date From
- 01-OCT-2011
- Date To
- 01-SEP-2015
- Title
- DAAD (GERSS) Scholarship
- Funding Agency
- DAAD ( 6000)
- Date From
- 11/2009
- Date To
- 04/2010
- Title
- The Three Algerian Jewish Merchants and the Venus Ship
- Summary
- This ground-breaking research project will bring to light previous unexplored and invaluable Jewish documents from the late 18th century, which have been kept for more than 200 years unstudied. The Prize Papers Collections in the National Archives in Kew Gardens contain more than 280 Jewish letters and documents in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew script) taken from the British cartel ship, the Venus, in 1800. The documents are valuable as very little comparative material in Algerian Judaeo-Arabic from that period is known. Thus, they present a most exciting opportunity to investigate the Jewish business network across borders in the late 18th-century Mediterranean. The project seeks funding in order to make the collection accessible to both academic scholars and to the public and to disseminate the results of the project nationally and internationally. This new project will lead the research into the field of Algerian Jewish language and history. The unexplored Algerian Judaeo-Arabic documents in the Prize Papers Collections constitute a unique chance to study the history, language, anthropology and culture of Jewish trades in the Mediterranean and North African countries during the late 18th century. It is hoped that the resulting investigation of these invaluable documents and letters will open up the time period to linguists, social and economic historians as an emerging source for research and knowledge. Therefore, the project importance is the knowledge that it proposes to generate to the Academic field and to the public.
- Funding Agency
- NA
- Date From
- 2020
Recognition
Representations
Invited Chapter Author, "Musical Lives: Volume 1 Identities, Communities, & Encounters" (MUSLIVES project, King's College London). Chapter: 'Rhythm, Dance, and Desire: A Lost Song Poem from the Medieval Cairo Genizah'.
Invited Peer Reviewer for Northern European Journal of Language Technology (Linköping University Electronic Press)
Invited Guest Interlocutor, "Musicality of Texts" Workshop, Music Department, King's College London.
Expert Academic Reviewer and Evaluator for a highly competitive annual Research Fellowship in Dublin
Invited Guest Editor, Special Issue (in Arabic and English) on the Cairo Genizah for Ostour, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ISSN: 2305-2473).
Invited Book Reviewer, Journal of Jewish Studies. Reviewed: Mordechai Akiva Friedman, A Dictionary of Medieval Judeo-Arabic. Vol. 69(1), pp. 212-214. (DOI: 10.18647/3366/jjs-2018).
Invited Chapter Author, "Multiscriptism in Literary Texts and Contexts" (Palgrave). Chapter focuses on Arabic/Hebrew script switching in Arabic poetry from the Cairo Genizah.
Invited External Reviewer for a Senior Academic Promotion application to Full/Associate Professor, The American University of Kuwait (AUK).
Invited Book Reviewer, Journal of Semitic Studies (Oxford University Press). Reviewed: Boris Liebrenz, Arab Traders in Their Own Words: Merchant Letters from the Eastern Mediterranean Around 1800. Vol. 69(2), pp. e42-e44. (DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgae011).
Invited External Examiner for a PhD Defense, University of Limerick (Declined due to other commitments).
Invited Speaker, "Arabic Business Letters in the Prize-Papers Collection," Cairo Conversations (funded by Mellon Grant), The American University in Cairo, Egypt.
Invited Peer Reviewer for Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean (Routledge / Society for the Medieval Mediterranean)
Invited Speaker, "The Cairo Genizah and Arabic Literature: Kalila wa-Dimna as an Example," Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education Online Middle Eastern Studies Webinar.
Invited Speaker, "The Cairo Genizah as a Treasury of Arabic Literature," The NYUAD Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Invited Speaker, "Arabic elements and Arabic interference in modern Hebrew texts written by Iraqi Jewish authors," Semitic Philology Seminar, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge.
Invited Book Reviewer, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (Declined due to other commitments).
Invited Speaker, "The Cairo Genizah and Arabic Literature: Kalila wa-Dimna as an Example," Research Colloquium Kalila and Dimna", AnonymClassic, Freie Universität Berlin.
Invited Speaker, "Cultural Translation in Iraqi Jewish Fiction: Possibilities and Problems," Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.
Invited Peer Reviewer for Journal of Semitic Studies (Oxford University Press)
Invited Chapter Author, "From the Battlefield of Books" (Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Brill). Chapter 12: 'Six Leaves of the Arabic Kalila wa-Dimna in Hebrew Characters'.
Invited Peer Reviewer for HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research (De Gruyter Brill)
Invited Reviewer for an Arabic translation of poems by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill from Irish (via English), as part of the Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture project "Aistriú: crossing territories, languages and artforms".
Invited Speaker, "The Art of Arabic Correspondence in the Ottoman Empire," Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (FAMES), University of Cambridge.
Memberships
Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA)
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSORS OF HEBREW
Irish Network for Middle East and North African Studies