Dr Özkan Şimşek

Dr Özkan Şimşek is an Assistant Professor of Kalam in the Department of Basic Islamic Sciences at Bingöl University and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at SOAS University of London. He completed his Master’s degree in Kalam at Istanbul University in 2018 with a thesis entitled "The Belief in Eschatological Saviour as a Problem of The Classical Islamic Theology"
He received his PhD in Kalam from Istanbul University in 2024 with a dissertation entitled "The Method in Late Muʿtazilite Kalām".

His research focuses on Islamic intellectual history and kalām, particularly classical and late Muʿtazilite theology, with special interests in the epistemology and methodology of kalām, theological ethics, and the relationship between kalām and philosophy. A significant part of his scholarly work is devoted to manuscript studies and the critical editing of early Islamic theological texts, particularly works associated with the Muʿtazilite tradition.

In collaboration with other researchers, he has contributed to critical editions and studies of a number of Muʿtazilite texts, including Kitāb al-Maqālāt, attributed to al-Jubbāʾī; the Imāmate chapter of Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī’s Sharḥ al-Uṣūl al-Khamsa; Abū Rashīd al-Nīsābūrī’s Ḥudūd al-Alfāẓ; Abū Sufyān al-Sarakhsī’s al-Mustawʿib li-l-Khilāf; and Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd al-Madāʾinī’s Sharḥ al-Urcūza fī al-Manṭiq. He has also contributed to critical editions and studies of the philosopher Abū al-Ḥasan al-ʿĀmirī’s Masāʾil al-Ray and the Ḥanafī scholar Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Samarqandī’s Fatḥ al-Ghalaq fī al-Tawḥīd.

Islamic intellectual history; Kalām; Muʿtazilite theology; classical and late Muʿtazilism; epistemology and methodology in Kalām

ORCID profile