Manan Ahmed Asif
{{short description|American historian}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Manan Ahmed Asif
| image =
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| birth_name =
| birth_date = 1971
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| occupation = Professor, Historian
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| known_for = research in history
| notable_works = A Book of Conquest : The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia
Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination
The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India
}}
Manan Ahmed Asif, also known as Manan Ahmed, is a Pakistani historian of South Asia and West Asia. He is an associate professor of history at Columbia University in New York City.{{cite web | url=https://history.columbia.edu/person/manan-ahmed/ | title=Columbia University Department of History | date=13 June 2016 | publisher=Columbia University | accessdate=3 May 2022}}
He is the founder of the South Asia blog Chapati Mystery{{cite web |title=About |url=https://www.chapatimystery.com/about |website=Chapati Mystery |access-date=20 February 2024}} and co-founder of [http://xpmethod.plaintext.in/ Columbia's Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research].{{cite web |title=Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research |url=https://xpmethod.columbia.edu/people.html |website=Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research at Columbia University |access-date=20 February 2024}} Since 2021, he is co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.{{cite web |title=Manan Ahmed has been appointed as one of the new Executive Editors of Journal of the History of Ideas. |url=https://history.columbia.edu/2021/07/20/manan-ahmed-has-been-appointed-as-one-of-the-new-executive-editors-of-journal-of-the-history-of-ideas/ |website=Department of History - Columbia University |access-date=20 February 2024 |date=20 July 2021}}
Life and education
Ahmed was born in 1971 in Lahore, Pakistan. At a young age, his family moved to Doha, Qatar, where his father worked as a migrant laborer. In the 8th grade, Ahmed and his family moved back to Lahore. Having grown up abroad, Ahmed initially struggled to reintegrate back into Pakistani culture, as his Arabic was more proficient than his Urdu.{{cite web |title=MARGINS, HISTORY, COSMOPOLITANISM an interview with Manan Ahmed |url=https://c-j-l-c.org/portfolio/manan-interview/ |website=Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism |access-date=20 February 2024 |date=18 September 2015}}
Ahmed graduated from Punjab University in Lahore with a BA in math and physics in 1991.{{cite web |title=Ahmed, Manan |url=https://history.columbia.edu/person/manan-ahmed/ |website=Department of History - Columbia University |access-date=20 February 2024 |date=13 June 2016}} In 1997, he graduated from Miami University in Ohio with a second BA with honors in history.{{cite web |title=Ahmed, Manan |url=https://history.columbia.edu/person/manan-ahmed/ |website=Department of History - Columbia University |access-date=20 February 2024 |date=13 June 2016}} At Miami, he completed two theses, one in art history on Paul Klee and Frida Kahlo, and a second on early Islamic history with Matthew S. Gordon.{{cite web |title=Senior Theses in Their Own Words |url=http://www.columbia-current.org/senior-theses.html |website=The Current |access-date=20 February 2024 |language=en}}
Ahmed's undergraduate thesis on early Islamic history earned him admission to the University of Chicago, where he completed his PhD in 2008.{{cite web |title=Senior Theses in Their Own Words |url=http://www.columbia-current.org/senior-theses.html |website=The Current |access-date=20 February 2024 |language=en}}{{cite web | url=http://history.columbia.edu/faculty/Ahmed.html | title=Columbia University Department of History | date=13 June 2016 | publisher=Columbia University | accessdate=15 October 2016}} His graduate thesis centered on the arrival of Muslims to the Indian subcontinent, and the memory and history of Muhammad Bin Qasim as a "conqueror".{{cite web |last1=Venkataramakrishnan |first1=Rohan |title=Interview: Manan Ahmed Asif on the ‘Loss of Hindustan’ and how colonialism altered our past |url=https://scroll.in/article/980979/interview-manan-asif-ahmed-on-the-loss-of-hindustan-and-how-colonialism-altered-our-past |website=Scroll.in |access-date=20 February 2024 |date=12 December 2020}} At Chicago, Ahmed studied under Muzaffar Alam, Fred Donner, Ronald Inden, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Shahid Amin.{{cite thesis | title=The Many Histories of Muhammad b. Qasim: Narrating the Muslim Conquest of Sindh|last=Ahmed|first= Manan|publisher=The University of Chicago|date=December 2008|degree=PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilizations |id = {{ProQuest|304406685}}}}{{cite web |last1=Venkataramakrishnan |first1=Rohan |title=Interview: Manan Ahmed Asif on the ‘Loss of Hindustan’ and how colonialism altered our past |url=https://scroll.in/article/980979/interview-manan-asif-ahmed-on-the-loss-of-hindustan-and-how-colonialism-altered-our-past |website=Scroll.in |access-date=20 February 2024 |date=12 December 2020}}
Career
Ahmed's work often combines archaeological, numismatic, epigraphic, and literary evidence and focuses on the history of South Asia.Kumar, Anu [https://thewire.in/88502/chachnama-book-of-conquest-islam/ A Misconstrued Narrative of Conquest – Manan Ahmed Asif on the 12th Century ‘Chachnama’], The Wire (thewire.in), December 24, 2016
According to Ahmed, Muslim presence in the subcontinent is not to be understood as a history of conquests or Manichean conflict (religious, military, etc.). Ahmed argues instead, that we recognize that presence as “lived spaces” (A Book 49), interconnected with each other across the region, and full of particularities that must be understood in their own terms.{{Cite news|title=Manan Ahmed Asif. A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia|last=Zutshi|first=Chitralekha|date=2017-12-11|journal=The American Historical Review|volume=122 |issue=5 |pages=1583–1584 |doi = 10.1093/ahr/122.5.1583}}
In 2014, he helped co-found [http://xpmethod.plaintext.in/ Columbia's Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research], which focuses on “mobilized humanities” and innovations in scholarly methodologies. One of the recent projects, Torn Apart/Separados, a series of rapidly produced data visualizations, responded to the Trump administration family separation policy announced by the United States government in 2018.{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.com/story/ice-is-everywhere-using-library-science-to-map-child-separation/|title='ICE Is Everywhere': Using Library Science to Map the Separation Crisis|last=Dreyfuss|first=Emily|date=2018-06-25|magazine=Wired|access-date=2019-05-22|issn=1059-1028}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.tpr.org/post/fronteras-digitally-mapping-trump-administrations-zero-tolerance-policy|title=Fronteras: Digitally Mapping Trump Administration's 'Zero Tolerance' Policy|last=Martinez|first=Norma|website=www.tpr.org|language=en|access-date=2019-05-22}} The project located 113 shelters used to house children separated from their parents at the Mexico-United States Border.{{Cite web|url=https://perma.cc/3TFX-6X8D|title=A shocking map of America's vast "immigrant detention machine"|website=perma.cc|language=en-us|access-date=2019-05-22}}{{Cite web|url=http://feministing.com/2018/07/03/torn-apart-mapping-the-geography-of-u-s-immigration-policy/|title=Torn Apart: Mapping the Geography of U.S. Immigration Policy|last=Fournier|first=Jess|website=Feministing|language=en-US|access-date=2019-05-22}}
Works
- 2016 A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia. Harvard University Press; {{ISBN|0-6746-6011-0}} (10); {{ISBN|978-0-67466-011-3}} (13).
- 2011 Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination. Just World Publications; {{ISBN|1-9359-8206-0}} (10); {{ISBN|978-1-93598-206-7}} (13).
- 2020 The Loss of Hindustan. HUP/Harper Publications;{{ISBN|978-0-67498-790-6}}.
References
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Category:American academics of Pakistani descent
Category:Alumni of St. Joseph Higher Secondary School
Category:21st-century American historians
Category:21st-century American male writers