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Nadav Samin is a historian of the twentieth century whose research has focused on the Middle East and Islamic world. He specializes in the history of Saudi Arabia, and how genealogy and religion have helped to shape the modern kingdom. Dr. Samin’s first book, Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and Tribal Belonging in Saudi Arabia (Princeton University Press, 2015) is an interdisciplinary history of the Saudi fascination with genealogies told through the life and work of the kingdom’s foremost genealogist. His forthcoming book, Power and Anxiety in the Kingdom: the Saudi Clergy Across One Century (Oxford University Press, 2026), draws from unexplored state records to narrate the Wahhābī clergy’s role in shaping and governing the modern state. He is also co-editor with Allen Fromherz of Knowledge, Authority, and Change in Islamic Societies: Studies in Honor of Dale F. Eickelman (Brill, 2021), as well as a number of articles on Arabian history, most recently “Poetry, Magic, and the Formation of Wahhabism,” with JESHO (2021). Dr. Samin’s current research focuses on US history. His next book project will be a biographical history of US intelligence in the twentieth century. His teaching interests include the modern Middle East and Islamic world, US foreign policy, religion in global affairs, and topics in global history.
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selected-publications
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Knowledge, Authority, and Change in Islamic Societies
Allen James Fromherz and Nadav Samin, ed., Knowledge, Authority, and Change in Islamic Societies: Studies in Honor of Dale F. Eickelman (Brill, 2021)
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Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and Tribal Belonging in Saudi Arabia
Nadav Samin, Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and Tribal Belonging in Saudi Arabia (Princeton University Press, 2015)
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