Affiliation
Research Professor, CNRS/CETOBAC, Paris
Biography
Born in 1973, Alexandre Papas is a historian of Islamic mysticism and Central Asia. He graduated in philosophy at the Sorbonne University, and holds diplomas in Persian, Turkish and Mongolian from the Institute of Oriental Languages & Civilisations, and a PhD in history from EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) in 2004. In 2006, he received the award of Best PhD Dissertation from the Institute for the Study of Islam and Societies of the Muslim World. His work deals mainly with Islamic mysticism, saint veneration and politico-religious issues in Central Asia and the neighbouring areas (China, Tibet, and Northern India) from the 15th century to present. He was a Senior Research Fellow at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) since October 2007 and is Research Professor since October 2017. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Kyoto University (summer 2007), the Ohio State University (winter and spring 2008) and the American University of Paris (spring 2009). In 2012, he has been awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal for Modern History. He is co-editor of Brill’s series Handbook of Sufi Studies: https://brill.com/view/serial/HO1-HO1-HSUF and executive editor of the Journal of Sufi Studies: https://brill.com/view/journals/jss/jss-overview.xml?language=en.
Publications related to the project’s theme
Alexandre Papas & Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, ed., Family Portraits with Saints: Hagiography, Sanctity and Family in the Muslim World, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz & Paris: EHESS, 2013
Alexandre Papas, ‘Les Tombeaux de Saints Musulmans au Xinjiang: Culte, Réforme, Histoire’, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 142 (2008), pp. 47‑62
Alexandre Papas, ‘Muslim Reformism in Xinjiang: Reading the Newspaper Yengi Hayat (1934‑1937)’, in I. Bellér-Hann, B.N. Schlyter, J. Sugawara, eds., Kashgar Revisited: Uyghur Studies in Memory of Ambassador Gunnar Jarring, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 161-83
Alexandre Papas, ‘Hagiography, Persian and Turkish’, Encyclopaedia of Islam III/6, 2018, pp. 65-9
Alexandre Papas, ‘Khojas of Kashgar’, in Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Asian History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, online
