School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Imad Khan
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Key information
Key information
- Qualifications
-
BA English (King's College London)
MA Medieval Studies (University of York) - Subject
- Near and Middle East
- Email address
- 733744@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title
- The Quran’s Concept of Language: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Meccan Suras
- Internal Supervisors
- Professor Wen-chin Ouyang
Biography
Imad Khan is a research student at SOAS University of London in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. His academic background is in literary studies (BA English, King’s College London), with a particular focus on critical theory and comparative literature.
His undergraduate dissertation examined the Quranic narrativisation of past events and its conception of historical time. He was awarded a full scholarship to pursue Medieval Islamic History at the University of York (MA Medieval Studies). During this period, he received training in Classical Arabic and Classical Latin, as well as analytic philosophy. He also contributed to a research project for the published book Why We Gather by Joshua Cockayne, a philosophical theologian, and Gideon Salter, a behavioural neuroscientist.
Drawing on interdisciplinary research, his master’s dissertation explored Quranic parables to establish a connection between historical time and human knowledge as presented in scripture. After completing his master’s degree, Imad travelled to Jordan on a scholarship to study the Classical Arabic Programme at the Qasid Institute in Amman. Over twelve months, he undertook intensive training in Classical Arabic and the Levantine dialect, engaging with renowned classical texts in Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and literature. Upon returning to the UK, he resumed his research into the Quran’s epistemology at SOAS.
His current work investigates beliefs about the power of affective speech in pre-Islamic culture and how the Quran reshapes these ideas in its representation of language. This involves deriving epistemological principles from pre-Islamic poetry and oration – both their earthly and unearthly qualities – to better understand the Quranic concept of qalb (heart) as the seat of emotion and sound reasoning, and how the heart can be inspired by natural and supernatural speech.
Research interests
- Quranic epistemology
- I'jaz al-Qur'an (Quranic inimitability)
- Comparative poetics
- Pre-Islamic Arabia
- Belief formation
- Scriptural translation
