Course Spotlight: MIDEAST 216 "Islam in History: The First 700 Years"

Can you please introduce yourself and your academic background?

My name is Aaron Rock-Singer and I am a scholar of Middle East history, with a particular research focus on religion and politics in the 20th-century Middle East.  I’ve spent substantial time in the Middle East, including two years in Cairo, three years in Jerusalem, and a few summers in Istanbul, and my research interests very much reflect my experience in the region. At Michigan, I teach in both Middle East and Judaic Studies departments and am fascinated by the similarities and linkages that one can discover between Islamic and Jewish movements in the 20th-century Middle East. Most recently, I’ve been working on a book project that compares the emergence of Islamic and Jewish claims to fuse religion and politics in Palestine under British Mandatory rule (known as “Mandate Palestine” and stretching from roughly 1917 to 1948). 

This fall, you’ll be teaching MIDEAST 216 “Islam in History: The First 700 Years”. Can you tell us more about this course?

This is a course that introduces students to an absolutely crucial early period of Islamic history, one that not only shaped Islam’s development up until today but is also constantly cited by 20th and 21st-century Islamic movements and states.  Students who take this course will learn about this formative period, as well as how to understand contemporary references to it, particularly by groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the new ruling party of Syria, Hizb Tahrir al-Sham.

Can you explain how your research interests relate to this course?

I’m fundamentally interested in how people understand the past in ways that reflect their own time, concerns, and preoccupations far more than they reflect the historical period in question! This is a fundamentally human phenomenon, and it teaches us a lot about how people in 2025 make sense of the world around them, too. As a result, both my research and teaching have tended to cluster around the linked questions of what happened in the past (specifically a “golden era” of that past) and how people in the 20th and 21st centuries understand it.

What materials or literature are you most excited to engage in with your students?

I love giving my students the opportunity to dig their teeth into translated primary sources from the first seven hundred years of Islamic history as a way into understanding how people in the past thought about the world, local and global. Just as importantly, though, I love working with students to think about the commonalities between the men and women whose voices can be found in these primary sources and the ideas and questions of people living today.

For any students who are interested in taking your course but may be hesitant to explore a new subject, why do you think they should enroll? What will they gain from this course?

A student who knows nothing about Islamic history will learn the basics of this history, including political and religious institutions and movements that transformed the world. Just as importantly, they will learn how to think about their own world and understand the past from a new perspective. Finally, I am deeply committed to the principle that classrooms are not merely a place where we can disagree civilly, but that they are a place that is most dynamic when we do disagree.  

Is there anything else students should know about this course or your teaching style?

I’ve been told that I am extremely enthusiastic when I lecture, so if you’re looking for someone with a good poker face, it isn’t me.