Michael Christopher Low
Visiting Scholar
Affiliation: The University of Utah
Education: BS, University of West Georgia; MA, Georgia State University; MA, MPhil, and PhD, Columbia University
Research Areas: Late Ottoman Empire, Arabian Peninsula, Indian Ocean world, Environmental History, water, infrastructure, desalination technology, energy, climate change, pilgrimage and mobility, medicine and disease, international law
About Michael
Michael Christopher Low’s primary research interests include the late Ottoman Empire, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Ocean World, and Environmental History. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2015 and is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Iowa State University.
Low is the author of Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (Columbia University Press, 2020). Drawing on Ottoman and British archival sources as well as published materials in Arabic and modern Turkish, Imperial Mecca analyzes how the Hijaz and the steamship-era pilgrimage to Mecca simultaneously became objects of Ottoman modernization, global public health, international law, and inter-imperial competition during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Low is also co-editor (with Lâle Can, Kent Schull, and Robert Zens) of The Subjects of Ottoman International Law (Indiana University Press, 2020).
Low’s articles have appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; Environment and History; the International Journal of Middle East Studies; and the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Global History and the Journal of Tourism History.
His research and language training have been supported by the American Institute for Yemeni Studies; Columbia University’s Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; the David L. Boren National Security Education Program; the Institute of Turkish Studies; Iowa State University’s Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities; Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
While in residence at NYU Abu Dhabi, Low will be working on a new monograph project and several articles exploring the entangled enviro-technical histories of desalination technology, water production, infrastructure, energy, and climate change in the Arabian Peninsula, the wider Middle East, and more globally.
Publications
Books
Low, Michael Christopher. Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj, translation into Turkish. Istanbul: Telemak Kitap, 2022.
Low, Michael Christopher. Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj, translation into Arabic. Beirut: Arab Scientific Publishers, 2022.
Low, Michael Christopher. Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
Can, Lâle, Michael Christopher Low, Kent F. Schull, and Robert Zens, eds. The Subjects of Ottoman International Law. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020.
Journals
Low, Michael Christopher. “Desert Dreams of Drinking the Sea, Consumed by the Cold: Transnational Flows of Desalination and Energy from the Pacific to the Persian Gulf.” Environment and History 26, no. 2 (2020): 145-174.
Can, Lâle, and Michael Christopher Low. “The Subjects of Ottoman International Law.” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 3, no. 2 (2016): 223-234.
Low, Michael Christopher. “Unfurling the Flag of Extraterritoriality: Autonomy, Foreign Muslims, and the Capitulations in the Ottoman Hijaz.” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 3, no. 2 (2016): 299-323.
Low, Michael Christopher. “Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of Pilgrimage and Potable Water in the Hijaz.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 4 (October 2015): 942-974.
Low, Michael Christopher. “The Indian Ocean and Other Middle Easts.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 3 (2014): 549-555.
Low, Michael Christopher. “Empire and the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance, 1865-1908.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 2 (2008): 269-290.
Book Chapters
Low, Michael Christopher. “The Infidel Piloting the True Believer: Thomas Cook and the Business of the Colonial Hajj.” In Umar Ryad, ed. The Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empires, 47-80. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Low, Michael Christopher. “Mecca: Pilgrimage and the Making of the Islamic World, 400-1500.” In Aran MacKinnon and Elaine MacKinnon, eds. Places of Encounter: Time, Place and Connectivity in World History. Vol. 1, 127-144. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2012.
Webinar
“Pandemic Pilgrimage: Ottoman Arabia, the Indian Ocean Hajj, and the Global Crisis of Cholera”
Events
In the News
Michael Christopher Low has earned the Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association for his book Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj.
Imperial Mecca Shortlisted for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize
Michael Christopher Low’s book Imperial Mecca (CUP, 2020) has been chosen as one of the six shortlisted titles for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize.
BKFS Book Prize | August 2021
Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (New Texts Out Now)
I turn to consider the hajj as an epidemiological bridge between British India and the Ottoman Empire.
Jadaliyya | February 25, 2021
Imperial Mecca: An Interview with Prof. Michael Low
The hajj—that is, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca—is a pillar of faith for Muslims, but in the late nineteenth century, it was also a legal, epidemiological, and imperial frontier.
Toynbee Prize Foundation | February 19, 2021
Imperial Mecca
Michael Christopher Low analyzes the late Ottoman hajj and Hijaz region as transimperial spaces, reshaped by the competing forces of Istanbul’s project of frontier modernization and the extraterritorial reach of British India’s steamship empire in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
New Books Network | January 28, 2021
Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj by Michael Christopher Low
In Imperial Mecca, Michael Christopher Low sets the Hijaz as a place between two imperial worlds: an Ottoman island adrift on a colonial ocean, lost in the artificial academic division between the Middle East and South Asia.
Asian Review of Books | January 12, 2021
Imperial Mecca
Prof. Michael Christopher Low (Iowa State University and NYU Abu Dhabi) discusses with Renee Manderville, Philip Gooding, and Archisman Chaudhuri (all IOWC) his new book, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).
Appraising Risk | September 30, 2020
Ajam Podcast #24: Imperial Mecca
Dr. Low discusses the challenges the Ottomans faced in administering the province of Hijaz and the hajj in the rapidly transforming 19th century.
Ajam Media Collective | September 28, 2020