Alexandre M. Roberts

Associate Professor of Classics and History
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California

[ faculty page | hcommons | zenodo | orcid ]

[ GrAlchEd: Greek Alchemical Editions in Progress ]

Publications

Book

Reason and Revelation in Byzantine Antioch: The Christian Translation Program of Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, Berkeley Series in Postclassical Islamic Scholarship 3 (University of California Press, 2020). [excerpt]

[Reviewed in Studies in Late Antiquity, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, The Catholic Historical Review, Mediterranean Encounters, and Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists.]

Articles and Book Chapters

future

“Alchemy, History, and Myth in the Souda Lexicon.”

In Alchemy in Byzantium, ed. Gerasimos Merianos (Athens: Institute of Historical Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation; invited November 2020; submitted August 2021).

“Writing and Reading Greek on the Pages of Arabic Translations of Byzantine Christian Classics.”

In Language Multiplicity in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. Claudia Rapp, Emilio Bonfiglio, and Ekaterini Mitsiou (Vienna University Press through Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming).
[preprint]

“Arabic Reception” (of John of Damascus).

In Companion to John of Damascus, ed. Ken Parry (Leiden: Brill; invited July 2020; submitted June 2022).

2023

“Thinking about Chemistry in Byzantium and the Islamic World.”

Journal of the History of Ideas 84.4 (2023): 595–619.
[pub|PDF]

2022

“Heretics, Dissidents, and Society: Narrating the Trial of John bar ʿAbdun.”

Dumbarton Oaks Papers 76 (2022): 117–144.
[open|PDF]

“Hierotechnicians by Name and Their Middle Byzantine Fame.”

Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies 1.1–2 (2022): 167–199.
[open access for first two months]

“Byzantine Engagement with Islamicate Alchemy.”

Isis 113.3 (2022): 559–580.
[open access for first month]
[interview about the article]

“Byzantine-Islamic Scientific Culture in the Astronomical Diagrams of Chioniades on John of Damascus.”

In The Diagram as Paradigm: Cross-Cultural Approaches, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger, David Roxburgh, and Linda Safran (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2022), 113–148.
[pub|PDF]

“Islamicate Alchemy in Greek Letters on the First Page of Marcianus graecus 299.”

Byzantinische Zeitschrift 115.1 (2022): 341–349.
[pub|PDF]

2021

“A Greek Alchemical Epigram in Its Middle Byzantine Context.”

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 83 (2020; published May 2021): 1–36.
[open|PDF]

“Like a Runaway Slave: The Discourse of an Eighth-Century Muslim Ascetic.”

Journal of Near Eastern Studies 80.1 (2021): 143–166.
[pub|PDF]

2020

“Mathematical Philology in the Treatise on Double False Position in an Arabic Manuscript at Columbia University.”

Philological Encounters 5.3–4 (2020): 308–352.
[pub|postprint|PDF]

“Framing a Middle Byzantine Alchemical Codex.”

Dumbarton Oaks Papers 73 (2019; published May 2020): 69–102.
[open|PDF]

2019

“A Re-Translation of Basil’s Hexaemeral Homilies by ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl of Antioch.”

Chapter 7 in Patristic Literature in Arabic Translations, ed. Barbara Roggema and Alexander Treiger, Arabic Christianity: Texts and Studies 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2020; published October 2019), 198–240.
[pub|PDF]

2017

“Being a Sabian at Court in Tenth-Century Baghdad.”

Journal of the American Oriental Society 137.2 (2017): 253–277.
[pub|PDF]

2013

“The Crossing Paths of Greek and Persian Knowledge in the 9th-century Arabic ‘Book of Degrees.’”

In Le vie del sapere in ambito siro-mesopotamico dal III al IX secolo, ed. Carla Noce, Massimo Pampaloni, and Claudia Tavolieri, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 293 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2013), 279–303.
[PDF]

2012

“Al-Mansur and the Critical Ambassador.”

Bulletin d’études orientales 60 (2011; published May 2012): 145–160.
[pub|PDF]

Encyclopedia entries

“Basileios von Emesa”; “Theophilos von Edessa.”

In Lexikon byzantinischer Autoren, ed. A. Riehle and M. Grünbart (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, forthcoming).

Book Reviews

Andrea De Giorgi, Ancient Antioch from the Seleucid Era to the Islamic Conquest (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

“The Paths and Memories Tying Antioch to Its Hinterland,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 30 (2017): 810–817.
[pub|PDF]

Timothy Power, The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500–1000 (American University in Cairo Press, 2012).

“In Mecca’s Backyard,” Marginalia Review of Books, April 29, 2014.
[open]


[Last updated December 2023.]