- This event has passed.
Aksum and Medina: African Diaspora and Early Islam
September 16 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
CSAAD Africa~Diaspora Forum Series
Dr. Hamza Zafer
Princeton University
Tuesday, September 24, 2025
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
20 Cooper SQ, 5 FL, Room 503
New York City, NY 10003
Zoom link: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/93654463712
Join the Center for the Study of Africa and African Diaspora (CSAAD) this September to discuss Dr. Hamza Zafer’s exploration of Islamic origins in the Red Sea domain of Aksum. Drawing from linguistic evidence, material culture, and narrative accounts, Dr. Zafer explores the African empire’s influence on the Medinan polity of the early seventh century. Dr. Zafer investigates, as a legacy of Aksumite imperialism in Arabia, early Muslim accounts of Abyssinian leaders within the Quranic community.
For accommodations, please contact the Program Manager for the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora at ac8829@nyu.edu.
Watch Event Recording Here
Hamza M. Zafer (PhD, Cornell 2014) is a Senior Lecturer in African Studies at Princeton University and a former Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Languages at the University of Washington. Dr. Zafer’s research connects premodern Ethiopic, Arabic, and Indic writings to recover genealogies of thought marginalized in Western scholarship. He is currently writing Aksum and Medina: The African Quran, which tells the story of the early Muslims from the vantage point of an African empire and diaspora. He trains students in Classical Ethiopic (Ge’ez) and ancient Red Sea inscriptions.
Coming of age between Karachi, Islamabad, and New York, Dr. Zafer’s writing and teaching are informed by his experiences as an asylum seeker in post-9/11 America. His migrant pedagogy weaves together classical literatures of the Global South and the diasporic polyglossia of his home cities. He is the author of Ecumenical Community: Language and Politics of the Ummah (Brill, 2020) and several essays on the Quran, including “The Quran as Red Sea Literature” (Edinburgh, 2026) and “The Abyssinian Matriarchs of Medina” (Cambridge, 2026).
Dr. Hamza Zafer, Reading List
In reference to CSAAD Africa~Diaspora Forum Series Event:
Aksum and Medina: African Diaspora and Early Islam
_____
Glen Bowersock. The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam. Oxford University,
2013.
Nadia El Cheikh. Women, Islam, and Abbasid Identity. Harvard University, 2o15.
Niall Finneran. The Archaeology of Ethiopia. Routledge, 2007.
Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh University,
1991.
Ngũgĩwa Thiongʾo. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.
James Currey, 2005.
Alexis Wick. The Red Sea: In Search of Lost Space. University of California, 2016.