University of Texas at Austin
E-mail: sayoub@utexas.edu
Samy A. Ayoub is Associate Professor of Law and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching focus on Islamic law, modern Middle Eastern legal systems, and the intersections of law and religion in contemporary Muslim societies. Trained in both law and Islamic studies, Dr. Ayoub has pursued academic and legal education in Egypt, Scotland, and the United States. He is the author of Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, 2020), which examines the integration of Ottoman sultanic authority into late Ḥanafī legal thought between the 16th and 19th centuries. The book, based on his award-winning dissertation (Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award, 2015), was translated into Arabic as الفقه والدولة والسلطان. He joined the International Society for Islamic Legal Studies (ISILS) in 2012 and served on its board from 2015 to 2022. Dr. Ayoub earned his PhD in Islamic Law from the University of Arizona, an MSc in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the University of Edinburgh, and a BA from al-Azhar University in Cairo.