iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 9h

There are probably funnier ways to lose a game… but not many. #gobirds

Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

My book “Before World Literature” about the Maqamat of al-Hariri is on sale. Hardcover book for about $30 until June 12 w the promo code. Also all Penn press books 📚 🤓

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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Klein: I agree that it is a revolutionary technology, that it is going to transform our economy on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. But unlike the Industrial Revolution, which created huge numbers of jobs, the goal of this revolution is to eliminate jobs.

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Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Frida Kahlo, Viva la Vida, Watermelons, 1954

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aunty gormint, bro beeble 🍉 @pashamkhan.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Jamal Elias posted this image of another beautiful book he’s published. I don’t have it yet, but I am inside it thanks to him. I wrote something about Punjabi Braj Arabic Persian Urdu literature. Very nice to be inside such books. @drkeegan.bsky.social is also inside. Free us

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Not true. What was Pope Urban II’s sermon on the crusades if not a podcast?

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

I’d also recommend an audio book (read by the author!). Paul Cobb’s “the race for paradise: an islamic history of the crusades”

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Happy to be published alongside @pashamkhan.bsky.social and other esteemed colleagues, including the late Tony Stewart.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Contributor copy just arrived in the mail! I enjoyed writing up this short study: “Some medieval Islamic debates about sex and sexuality.”

Pic of book cover “what makes islamic literature islamic” edited by Jamal Elias

First page of Keegan’s essay in the volume.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

I wonder how much of the anti-AI backlash stems from the fact that for decades we supposedly didn’t have money for human needs and infrastructure and now that there’s a tech that could eliminate the need for many human labors, there is suddenly endless money available to make that tech. Huh.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

This could have some very interesting implications for the United States!

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

I recognized James Bond (but didn’t know the actor’s name bc I never do) and then had to look up Weisz’s name even though I recognized her. I am terrible with knowing celebrities.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Was doing homework at a coffee shop in nyc when a couple asked if they could use the other end of the table (I said yes). I wasn’t wearing glasses. The woman turned to the man and exclaimed “darling, you’re gorgeous.” I put on my glasses. It was James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Rachel Weisz.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

My new article has just posted. It’s on an Ayyubid prince (nephew of Saladin) who wrote a spirited defense of Abu Hanifa to rebut the polemical reports found in al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’s history. Free eprint here. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SQATY...

tandfonline.com

The Sovereignty of the Scholar-Sultan: An ʾAyyūbid Prince's Defence of Abū Ḥanīfa

The ʾAyyūbid Prince al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam ʿĪsā (d. 624/1227) expressed his scholarly idiom of sovereignty through Islamic scholarship. Other ʾAyyūbids were Shāfiʿīs who occasionally wrote poetry and...

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Looking for a Christmas gift that won’t arrive until March? As you do… well, my book is available for pre-order and there’s a 40% discount until the end of the month! (Discount code PENN-HOLIDAY25). www.pennpress.org/978151282887...

pennpress.org

Before World Literature – Penn Press

An account of Arabic literary history through the lens of the reception of the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī, a twelfth-century collection of fifty trickster st...

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

pennpress.org

Before World Literature – Penn Press

An account of Arabic literary history through the lens of the reception of the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī, a twelfth-century collection of fifty trickster st...

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

Asked if he’d tried it, he said: “I also wrote about suicide and never thought about trying that.” The isnad is wear tho.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

He was, so the lore goes, asked about whether he had done any hands on research for this book.

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Athul K. Acharya @athul.acharya.cc · 09/09/2025

"Harvard can't use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions" is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It's vanishingly few steps removed from "Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

My first monograph "Before World Literature" will be released by the University of Pennsylvania Press in March 2026. I hope it will be of interest to folks in comparative literature, Islamic studies, and classical Arabic literature. www.pennpress.org/978151282887...

Cover image of the book "Before World Literature" by Matthew L. Keegan.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

The poet had a large library, much of it he had copied himself. In the floods in Baghdad in 1172, his books were damaged by the water and the detritus of the nearby tannery — and he became blind in his chemical attempts to repair them and stop them from smelling horribly.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Some advice from the 12th century for authors... لا تحسبنْ أنّ بالكتـــــــــــــــــــــــــب مثلنا ستصير فللدجاجة ريشٌ ولكنها لا تطير Don't ever think that the likes of us will live on through books. The chicken has feathers, But it cannot fly. - Ibn al-Dahhān (d. 1174 CE)

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

For those interested in Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies in West Africa, I recommend Sulaiman A. Alagunfon's study of the Arabic Maqāma. It shatters a lot of myths about Arabic literature and Islamic education. My foreword to the book can be found here: www.academia.edu/129479952/Fo...

academia.edu

Foreword to Sulaiman A. Alagunfon's "The Classical Arabic Maqāma in Yorubaland, Nigerias "

A foreword to Sulaiman Adewale Alagunfon's book on the Maqāma in Yorubaland, Nigeria. I sought to highlight some of Dr. Alagunfon's unique contributions while emphasizing how this study might ...

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Muhammad Amin al-Khanji, who died in 1939, was a prolific publisher of classical Arabic texts. He also became a manuscript trader who shaped the major collections of Egypt, Europe, and America. My colleagues at the IAS have been working on this amazing project -- described in the linked article.

ias.edu

A Window into Early Twentieth-Century Arabic Manuscripts Transactions

On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, a team of librarians from the American University in Cairo (AUC) arrived at the al-Khanji Bookstore in downtown Cairo to oversee the transfer of a rare archive document...

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

It's part of a pair of articles that were originally one too-long article. The other was originally the final section of "Rethinking Poetry" and puts the argument more succinctly: "Adab without the Crusades." It's about how solidarity was imagined. t.co/IXZ4COs28a

t.co

https://www.academia.edu/44936086/Adab_Without_the_Crusades_The_Inebriated_Solidarity_of_a_Young_Officers_Hunting_Epistle

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

It is my attempt to rethink both the content of Zengid-Ayyubid poetry and how it circulated. It takes examples of poetry from the massive adab anthology of Saladin's secretary ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī. And it's not all about asceticism and jihad. t.co/28i0h05tqn

t.co

https://www.academia.edu/100600968/Rethinking_Poetry_as_Anti_Crusader_Propaganda_Licentiousness_and_Cross_Confessional_Patronage_in_the_%E1%B8%AAar%C4%ABdat_al_qa%E1%B9%A3r

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Archiving posts from the hellsite: An article of mine was selected in 2023 as the article of the month over at The Mediterranean Seminar. The article is "Rethinking Poetry as (Anti-Crusader) Propaganda." www.mediterraneanseminar.org/2023-june-ar...

mediterraneanseminar.org

2023 June - Article of the Month — The Mediterranean Seminar

2023 June - Article of the Month

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I'll be posting some material from the old hellsite because I was trying to post pre-publication material and to summarize already-published stuff that people might not available. I'll start with Leo Africanus’s Cosmography. The recent translation had some glancing citations of my scholarship.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I'm working on a 13th-century manuscript of Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq — transmitted from the author al-Sarrāj to the most famous female scholar of the age Fakhr al-Nisāʾ to the copyist Ibn al-Khayyir. Extensive reading & audition notes throughout the MS. I'll be posting provisional transcriptions for fun!

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

And yes, there are both reading and audition notes in the MS - so samāʿāt is a bit misleading. :)

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

وصحح ذلك ….؟ بمسجده المعروف بدار الليف؟؟ بشارع نهر الزندبرد؟ بشرق باب الازج في مدينة السلام كتبه عبد اللطيف علي بن النفيس بن بوزندان {بوزنداز} السلامي الحنبلي عفى الله عنه والحمد لله رب العالمين

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

قرات جميعه على الشيخ الإمام العالم ركن الدين ابي اسحاق ابراهيم بن محمود بن سالم بن مهدي عُرف بابن الخيّر المقرئ بسماعه في الأصل من شهدة عن المصنف ومنه كانت القراءة وعورض بهذه النسخة فسمعه ولده الشيخ العالم سديد الدين ابو محمد اسماعيل وصحح ذلك يوم الأحد سادس جمادى الآخرة من سنة سبع عشرة وستمائة

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Transcription challenge (and a distraction from it all). I've been working on transcribing some samāʿāt but still lots of uncertainties. More on this manuscript to come IA. It is a copy of Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq with a riwāya that goes through Fakhr al-Nisāʾ. Suggestions welcome #arabic #مخطوطات

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 04/08/2023

Happy to have helped in a tiny way with this translation of Leo Africanus’s Cosmography, in which there is a glancing reference to a commentary on Al-Hariri’s Maqamat… that thing I wrote my dissertation about.

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 03/08/2023

In the Prettyman courthouse today there was talk of the co-conspirator Cheesebro. These names… I can’t.

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Amanda Hannoosh Steinberg @menalibahs.bsky.social · 01/08/2023

@arablit.bsky.social is here!!! Follow them for content to brighten your feeds with Arabic literature (in English) :)

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Dr Matthew L Keegan @drkeegan.bsky.social · 02/08/2023

Welcome to August, y’all. It’s the Sunday Scaries but for a whole month…

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