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. Through a global comparative lens, his work examines how religious traditions interact with modern legal institutions and how those interactions shape broader sociopolitical structures. 

Ayoub’s book Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence received the 2015 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award and was later translated into Arabic. He has held fellowships at Harvard Law School’s Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World and at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He previously served as president of the Islamic Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools and is a member of the editorial boards of Arab Law Quarterly and the Journal of Law in the Middle East. Prior to joining UT Austin, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Education 

PhD, University of Arizona
MSc, University of Edinburgh
MSc, University of Edinburgh
BA, Alexandria University 

Publications 

Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence