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He received his Ph.D. from the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 2021. Before coming to 91����, he held appointments as a Research Fellow at the Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization, Teaching Fellow in Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College. His current book project, The Politics of Divine Unity: Muḥammad ibn Tūmart and Almohad Islam, concerns the Almohad Caliphate and the intellectual history of medieval North Africa and Iberia. He is likewise engaged in research on the typology of Islamic sects, from the qur’ānic period (ca. 550-650) to the early modern period. 

At 91����, Watling has led courses on the history of Islam, Islamic mysticism, Islamic leadership, and women in the Islamic world. He approaches the teaching of Islam from a global perspective that foregrounds Muslims’ persistent negotiation of identity and communal boundaries with other Muslims and neighboring religious and political cultures.

“Ḥayy’s Two Nativities: Ismā‘īlī ta’wīl and Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān”

The Journal of Islamic Philosophy 15, no. 1 (2024), 66–110.

Entry for “Almohads” in The Database of Religious History, University of British Columbia, 2023

[invited by Julian Weideman (ed.)]

Review of Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain, by Sarah Stroumsa,

Journal of Near Eastern Studies 80, no. 1 (April 2021), 221–4.

[Book Manuscript – in progress] The Politics of Divine Unity: Muḥammad ibn Tūmart and Almohad Islam