Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Mark Wagner
2022-2023
Home institution
Louisiana State University
Country of origin (home institution)
United States
Discipline(s)
Literature
Modern history
Religious sciences
Theme(s)
Globalization
Identity
Religion
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Mark Wagner is Associate Professor of Arabic at the Louisiana State University. He is a specialist in Arabic literature with a particular interest in literary and legal texts from Yemen and in the cultural interactions between Muslims and Jews. He has published books and articles on a wide range of topics, among them Muslim and Jewish poetic traditions in Yemen, blasphemy in Islamic law, and Quranic exegesis.
Research Project
The Rothschilds of Arabia and Africa: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Mercantile Empire Under the British Raj
Who were the Messas and what impact did they have on Middle Eastern and Jewish history?
I plan to write a history of the Messa family of Aden and its network of satellite communities. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Aden sat astride a crucial artery of world commerce and a local Jewish family, the Messas, profited handsomely as the main suppliers of the British army. The Messa family played a large role in shaping a distinctive Adeni Jewish culture that was keenly attuned to contemporary ideas concerning bourgeois respectability, colonial constructions of race and class, and debates over modernity and gender within the wider Jewish world. Years of bitter litigation between heirs brought an end to the family business. The rise of Jewish, Yemeni, and pan-Arab nationalisms sounded these communities’ death-knell.
Research Interests:
Classical and Vernacular Arabic Literature; Muslim-Jewish relations; Islamic law.