Anna Ayşe Akasoy

Anna Ayşe Akasoy is Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her scholarship spans a range of subjects, including Islamic intellectual history, cultural encounters, ethics, philosophy, travel literature, and the history of science and medicine. Through her work, she has contributed significantly to contemporary understanding of the diverse intellectual, cultural, and social traditions that shaped the premodern Islamic world.

Professor Akasoy's research is distinguished by its interdisciplinary scope and its attention to the movement of ideas across religious, linguistic, and geographical boundaries. One of her major research projects explores the history of falconry in the Middle East from its earliest manifestations to the Ottoman period. Drawing upon Arabic falconry manuals, veterinary medicine, social and political history, Islamic law and ethics, poetry, archaeology, and art history, this work illuminates the complex relationship between knowledge, nature, and elite culture in the Islamic world.

A second area of her scholarship focuses on Muslim encounters with Buddhism and Indian religious traditions. Her work examines how Muslims understood and represented Buddhism across centuries of intellectual exchange and cultural contact. Through studies of figures such as Rashīd al-Dīn and broader investigations into representations of idols and idolatry, she has shed new light on the ways Muslim scholars engaged with religious traditions beyond the Islamic world.

Professor Akasoy’s third major area of research brings together philosophy and literature through the study of decision-making in Islamic intellectual traditions. Examining the intersections of epistemology, ethics, psychology, political philosophy, and narrative expression, this work explores how Muslim thinkers understood human agency, judgment, and moral deliberation. By combining philosophical analysis with literary and historical sources, her scholarship demonstrates the richness of Islamic approaches to questions that remain deeply relevant today.

In addition to her research, Professor Akasoy teaches widely on topics including tolerance, happiness, cultural encounters, and travel literature. Her work consistently emphasizes the importance of placing Islamic intellectual traditions within broader global and comparative contexts while also highlighting their distinctive contributions to human thought and culture.

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