Elizabeth Sirriyeh

Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies

+44 (0)113 343 3651

Research Interests

Dr Sirriyeh's research interests are in Islamic Studies, especially Sufism and Islamic reform, dreaming and dream interpretation in Islam, religion in Ottoman Syria, Muslim ideological disputes and the interface between Islamic and modern Western thought.

Research Supervision

Dr Sirriyeh currently supervises research in the area of Islam and the environment in the Middle East.

She would welcome applications from students wishing to conduct research on:

  • Islamic reform from the 18th to 20th centuries
  • modern Islamic ideological disputes
  • Islam and public life in the modern Middle East
  • Sufism (especially Sufi thought as well as critiques of Sufism from the 18th century to the present).

Teaching

  • Introduction to the Study of Islam
  • Studying Islam
  • Religion and Culture in the Western Middle Ages
  • Sufism
  • Contemporary Islamic Thought
  • Islam and Public Life in the Middle East

Selected Publications

  • Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World, by Elizabeth Sirriyeh (Richmond: Curzon, 1999). ISBN: 0 7007 1058 2 (hardback) 0 7007 1060 4 (paperback)
  • Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, 1641-1731, by Elizabeth Sirriyeh (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005). ISBN: 0 415 34165 5 (hardback)
  • Sufis and Anti-Sufis: the Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World (Richmond: Curzon, 1999)
  • 'Dreams of the Holy Dead: Traditional Islamic Oneirocriticism Versus Salafi Scepticism' in Journal of Semitic Studies (2000)
  • 'Rashid Rida's Autobiography of the Syrian Years, 1865-1897' in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures (2000)
  • 'Whatever Happened to the Banu Jama'a? The Tail of a Scholarly Family in Ottoman Syria' in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2001)
  • 'Sufi Thought and its Reconstruction' in Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi (eds), Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century (London: IB Tauris, 2004)
  • Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, 1641-1731 (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005)