Hiroaki Kawanishi
PhD candidate at the Center for Islamic Theology
Supervised by Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri, Chair of Islamic Doctrine
PhD project
“Diversity within Islam: Inner-Islamic Discourses in the Early Modern Muslim World with a Special Focus on the Ottoman Reception of Sanūsī’s Kalam”
Hiroaki has been pursuing his Ph.D. since Fall 2018 at the Center for Islamic Theology. His dissertation titled, Diversity within Islam: Inner-Islamic Discourses in the Early Modern Muslim World with a Special Focus on the Ottoman Reception of Sanūsī’s Kalam, looks at the eighteenth-century polymath ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī’s (d. 1143/1731) commentaries on Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Sanūsī’s (d. 895/1490) creedal texts. The two scholars have been buried in oblivion in spite of their significant influence remarked in the course of Islamic intellectual history. By an in-depth examination of this case study, the research aims to shed light on a theological trend in the Ottoman realm that has been ignored in Western scholarship. The research will contribute to further development in the study of Ottoman theology, tackling its present assessment in academia and presenting a new thesis on the neglected theological tradition.
About Hiroaki Kawanishi
Hiroaki’s academic journey has gone through Japan, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Malaysia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. His first graduate degree (M.A.) was from the Ibn Haldun University. He is a graduate of an honors program of the ISAR Foundation in Istanbul, where he was trained in Islamic sciences organized in the Ottoman curriculum. Since 2020, He is a scholarship holder of the DAAD Doctoral Grants. He speaks Japanese, English, Arabic, Turkish, Ottoman (intermediate), Persian (intermediate), and currently studies German.