- Nomanul Haq
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Dr. Syed Nomanul Haq Born Karachi, Pakistan Nationality US citizen of Pakistani origin Alma mater University College London and Harvard University, Hull University Occupation Professor of Humanities Employer Lahore University of Management Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Known for Historical and philosophical scholarship. Professorial appointments at various prestigious Ivy League universities Influenced by Muhammad Iqbal; his father, Professor Syed Muntakhabul Haq; Sir Karl Popper Dr. Syed Nomanul Haq hihihii (Nu'man al-Haqq), born in Karachi, Pakistan, is an international scholar and intellectual historian of Pakistani origin noted especially for his contributions to the fields of Islamic history and Islamic philosophy. He is currently a senior faculty member at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. In his career spanning twenty years, Dr. Haq has gained widespread repute for his teaching, publications and editorial and research work on the history and philosophy of science, postmodern philosophy, history of religion, history of art and history of literature, for which he has won multiple prizes and awards.[1]
Contents
Early life
Dr. Syed Nomanul Haq was born in Pakistan, but spent most of his early life in England and the USA. He completed his undergraduate degree in applied physics at Hull University, and then as a graduate student went to University College London to study history of science and philosophy, specializing eventually in Graeco-Arabic intellectual history which also included cultural studies.
In the course of this undertaking he learned a number of modern and classical languages; among these are Persian and Arabic which he studied at London's SOAS.[1] In addition, Dr. Haq is also competent in Urdu (and accompanying languages such as Punjabi and Hindi) as well as German.[2] During the earlier stages of his doctoral research he was selected to go as a transfer student to Harvard: it is here that he did most of his dissertation research, having worked at times in the team of Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow. In 1990, London University awarded him the doctorate.[1] Before his postdoctoral appointment at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, Dr. Haq also worked for several years as both a freelance and staff member journalist at the World Service of the BBC London.[2]Professional career
Following the postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, Dr. Nomanul Haq’s university teaching career began in earnest with his faculty appointment at Tufts University after which he became Assistant Professor at Brown University, and then at Rutgers University, finally ending up at the University of Pennsylvania at the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and of South Asian Studies.[3] In 2006, he joined The School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law at LUMS.
Dr. Nomanul Haq is General Editor of Oxford University Press' series Studies in Islamic Philosophy and chairs an editorial committee of senior scholars from Princeton, McGill and New York University. He is an editorial consultant for several scholarly journals, and was appointed in 2004 as Scholar-in-Residence and Project Director at the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, an institution in Islamabad funded by the United States Federal Government; he continued to function in this position until recently in an advisory capacity.[1]
Dr. Haq has published widely, with a number of books and numerous articles to his credit. He writes both in English and in Urdu. Most recently, he contributed two chapters to the New Cambridge History of Islam, the prestigious standard reference in the field published by Cambridge University Press, and wrote another chapter for a volume of expert discourses on religion and science published in 2009 by Harvard University Press. His writings on Arabo-Islamic philosophy have been cited in the Philosophy Citation Index, giving him an international scholarly status in this research area. His other writing projects fall in the domains of intellectual history, literature, history of science, and cultural studies including the history of art.[1]In 2000 he won the coveted Templeton Award; then, in 2004, the Pakistan League of America's Outstanding Scholarship Award; earlier being the recipient of prestigious grants from the American Philosophy of Science Association, Harvard University, and Henry Luce Foundation. He has been given the honor of delivering the Surjit Singh Annual Lecture at Berkeley, and now sits on the Doctoral Committee of Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union.[1] He is also a member of the UN-sponsored Forum on Religion and Ecology.[3]
Personal Life and Life at LUMS
Over the course of four years at LUMS since his arrival in 2006, Dr. Noman has acquired a reputation for providing colorful liberal arts courses. 'Sir Noman' will gladly take out students for lunch and dinner, and is known to go as far to (successfully) persuade reserved parents to allow their children to major in the humanities. Loved by his students thus, he is also regarded by those who know him personally as one of the greatest living scholars of Pakistan.
In spring 2010-11, He is supposed to teach a unique course in history of LUMS which title is 'An Intellectual & Cultural History of Spain'. He will also offer another course at the LUMS on classical Urdu literature; and in fall 2011-2012, the much awaited What is Postmodernism?
Dr. Noman has extended family in Pakistan, but his immediate family resides in The United States. His son is a graduate of Yale University, and is competent in some eleven languages.
Courses Offered
At The University of Pennsylvania
- Islam and the West
- Sufism in South Asia
- Introduction to the History of Science
- Science, Religion, and Magic
- From Mecca to the Taj Mahal: Surveying the Diversity in Muslim Societies
- Islamic Art
- Geometry and Art
- Occultism in Arabo-Islamic Alchemical Literature
- Timurid Art
- Mughal Miniatures
At Brown University
- Sufism
- Introduction to Islam
- Islam and Politics
- An Intellectual History of the Theories of Islamic Ethics
- Aristotle in the Arabo-Islamic World
At Rutgers University
- The Prophet of Islam in History and in Metaphysics
- Introduction to Religion
At The Lahore University of Management Sciences
- An Intellectual & Cultural History of Spain (starting from January 2011)
- Sufism in South Asia
- World Civilizations
- What is Postmodernism?
- The Journey of Symbolism from Ghalib, Iqbal, And Faiz to Contemporary Lyrics
- Introduction to Islamic Art
- Plato & Aristotle
- Islamic Studies
- Ghalib and his poetry
Publications
- Names, Natures, and Things: The Alchemist Jaabir ibn Hayyaan and his Kitaab al-Ahjaar (Book of Stones). Dordrecht/London/ Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993 (Cloth). Paperback Edition, 1995.[1]
- With Ted Peters and Muzaffar Iqbal, God, Life, and the Cosmos: Theistic Perspectives. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002.[4]
- Harris Khalique, Select Verses, with an Analytical Introduction and Annotation (in Urdu). Karachi: Maktaba-e Daniyal, 2006.[1]
- Refiner’s Fire: Some Reflections on Neville, Postmodernism, and the Tends in Discourses on Islam in P. Heltzel and A. Yong eds. Theology in a Global Context: Essays in Honor of Robert Neville. New York/London: Continuum, T & T Clark International, 2004.[4]
- Islam and Ecology: Toward Retrieval and Reconstruction. Daedalus. Fall 2001. Vol. 130, No. 4, 141-177.
- Occult Sciences and Medicine. New Cambridge History of Islam. Vol. 3, Michael Cook ed.-in-chief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.[1]
(For a full list, please see http://islamsci.mcgill.ca/Haq.pdf)
Prizes, Grants and Awards
- Pakistan League of America, Annual Award for Outstanding Scholarship, 2004.
- Science and Religion Development Grant, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), Berkeley. Benefactors: The Templeton Foundation, 2002.
- American Science Affiliation. Benefactors: The Templeton Foundation, 2002.
- Science and Religion Course Competition Prize for the year 2000, CTNS, Berkeley. Benefactors: The Templeton Foundation.
- Cross-Cultural Comparative Religious Ideas Collaborative Project. National Endowment for the Humanities and Henry Luce Foundation, 1995-96 through to 1998-99.
- Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies Grant, 1992.
- American Philosophy of Science Association Grant, 1992.
- Bank of Credit & Commerce Merit Scholarship for Study at Harvard, 1983-86.
- British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Grant, 1979-80.
- British Council Merit Award, 1978-79.[4]
See also
References
External links
- Salman Rushdie, Blame Yourself. The New York Times, February 23, 1989.
- Recovering Iqbal. Dawn Newspaper, August 23, 2008.
- Studies in Islamic Philosophy. Ibn Taymiyya and his Times, 2010.
- Symposium on Science and the Muslim Civilization. Khwarzimic Science Society, November 4, 2007.
- Three Views of Science in the Islamic World. God, Life and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives, 2002.
- Science vs. Scientism: the Question of Cultural Space. Dawn Newspaper, July 31, 1995.
Categories:- Islamic studies scholars
- Historians of science
- Pakistani scholars
- Muslim philosophers
- Living people
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