Waleed Ziad 

Waleed Ziad is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University in Qatar. His research interests lie at the intersection of social history, religious studies, and anthropology. Professor Ziad’s scholarship examines the historical and philosophical foundations of Muslim revivalism and mysticism in South and Central Asia and Iran. In this endeavor, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in over 140 towns across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. 

He is the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard Press, 2021), which won the prestigious Albert Hourani Prize given by the Middle East Studies Association of North America as well as the American Institute for Pakistan Studies 2022 Book Prize. His most recent book In the Treasure Room of the Sakra King: Votive Coinage from Gandharan Shrines (American Numismatic Society, 2022) builds on his long-standing research into numismatics and material culture of the Indo-Iranian borderlands. His forthcoming book, Sufi Masters of the Afghan Empire: Bibi Sahiba and Her Sacred Networks (Harvard Press), is a continuation of his core research on the development of Sufi networks, spanning modern-day Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, India, China, and Russia. He has also written extensively on historical and ideological trends in the Muslim world, his work appearing in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor, and The Hill. 

Professor Ziad received his Ph.D. in history from Yale University.