Yousef Casewit
Humanities Research Fellow
Education: BA, The George Washington University; MA, MPhil, PhD, Yale University
About Yousef
Yousef Casewit completed his M.A., M.Phil, and PhD in Islamic Studies at Yale University’s Religious Studies Department. He received his B.A. from The George Washington University in 2006 with a focus on Religion and Middle Eastern Studies. He teaches Arabic Intellectual Heritage and Culture at the American University of Sharjah (UAE).
His research centers on the medieval intellectual history of North Africa and Muslim Spain. Yousef is currently working on a study of the life, teachings, and legacy of the Sevillan Qur'an commentator and mystic Ibn Barrajan (d. 536/1141), tentatively entitled "The Paradise of Certainty: Ibn Barrajan and the Rise of Andalusi Mysticism." He has several publications, the most recent (co-edited with Gerhard Bowering) is a two-volume critical edition of Ibn Barrajān’s Sufi exegesis which is currently under review at Brill TSQ Series.
Born in Egypt and raised in Morocco, he is fluent in Arabic, French, and Spanish. Yousef has traveled throughout the Islamic world and has studied with Muslim scholars in Morocco, Syria, and Mauritania.
Publications
Selected Publications
Casewit, Yousef. The Divine Names: A Mystical Theology of the Names of God in the Qurʾan by ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī. NYU Press, 2023.
Casewit, Yousef. The Mystics of al-Andalus: Ibn Barrajān and Islamic Thought in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Casewit, Yousef. “A Muslim Scholar of the Bible: Prooftexts from Genesis and Matthew in the Qur'an Commentary of Ibn Barrajān of Seville (d. 536/1141).” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 18, no. 1 (2016): 1-48.
Böwering, Gerhard, and Yousef Casewit, eds. A Qurʾān Commentary by Ibn Barrajān of Seville (d. 536/1141). Brill, 2015.
Casewit, Yousef. “A Reconsideration of the Life and Works of Ibn Barrajān.” Al-Abhath 60-61 (2012-13): 111-142.
