Samy A. Ayoub

Samy A. Ayoub is Associate Professor of Law and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on Islamic law, modern legal systems in the Middle East, and the relationship between law and religion in contemporary Muslim societies. His work explores how religious traditions interact with modern legal institutions and how these interactions shape broader sociopolitical structures, viewed through a global comparative lens. Dr. Ayoub holds interdisciplinary training in law and Islamic studies, with academic experience in Egypt, Scotland, and the United States. Dr. Ayoub’s book, Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, 2020), is based on his dissertation, which received the 2015 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award. The book investigates authoritative Ḥanafī legal works from the Ottoman world between the 16th and 19th centuries CE. It casts new light on the understudied late Ḥanafī jurists, analyzing how Ottoman sultanic authority was incorporated into the Ḥanafī legal tradition and the broader process of lawmaking. The book has also been translated into Arabic.

Dr. Ayoub was selected as a Fellow at the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School in Fall 2021 and held a previous fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2018–2019). He served as President of the Islamic Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) during the 2018–2019 academic year. Dr. Ayoub is currently a member of the editorial boards of Arab Law Quarterly and the Journal of Law in the Middle East(LexisNexis), where he contributes to shaping contemporary discussions in the field. Prior to joining UT Austin, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.