Moaaz Lafi

My name is Moaaz Lafi, and I am an MA candidate at the American University in Cairo, supported by a full fellowship. My academic journey has been marked by a sustained passion for the study of Islamic cities, their histories, and the intellectual traditions that have shaped urban life across the centuries. Along the way, I have been honored to receive the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) Fellowship and the Barakat Trust Fellowship, two opportunities that have expanded my horizons and allowed me to engage more deeply with primary sources and international scholarly networks.
My research lies at the intersection of urban history, Islamic law, and intellectual history. I am particularly interested in questioning and rethinking the widespread assumptions about the “Islamic city”, a concept that has often been romanticized or misunderstood in both Western and Middle Eastern scholarship. Through my work, I seek to critically examine how the city was represented, regulated, and imagined in Islamic legal and historical texts, and to understand the complex ways in which law, power, and society interacted to shape the built environment.
Currently, I am working on a book project that aims to offer a comprehensive critique of the idea of the “Islamic city” as it appears in both classical jurisprudence and modern academic discourse.