Kevin van Bladel

Kevin T. van Bladel is a Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. A philologist and historian, he studies texts and societies of the Near East of the period 200-1200 with special attention to the history of scholarship, the transition from Persian to Arab rule, and historical sociolinguistics. His research focuses on the interaction of different language communities and the translation of learned traditions between Arabic, Iranian languages, Aramaic, Greek, and Sanskrit. He is the author of The Arabic Hermes, which investigates the figure Hermes Trismegistus in its Arabic reception and transformation, showing how the ancient Egyptian sage of legend came to be considered a prophet by medieval Muslims, and From Sasanian Mandaeans to Sabians of the Marshes, which sheds light on the early history of the Mandaean religion and its origins in Sasanian Iraq. Among his published articles there are studies of Qur’anic cosmology, the history of the eighth-century Arabic translations of Sanskrit texts commissioned by Bactrian patrons, Zoroastrian Middle Persian lore in Arabic reception, language shift and conversion in the wake of the Islamic conquests, and other subjects.