Faisal H. Husain

My scholarship seeks to place human history within the larger story of Earth and life, a story in which we are influential actors, but never the only ones. I pursue this goal through material histories of the early modern Ottoman Middle East (c. 1500-1800), exploring how physical and biological conditions shaped human societies, and how those societies reshaped their surroundings in return. Environmental history has been one primary expression of this interest. My first book, Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2021), examined how two great rivers and their management helped structure Ottoman institutions and provincial life. My current research extends to the circulation of practical knowledge and expertise across Ottoman frontiers and the wider early modern world. I am also co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Global Animal History with Emily Wakild and Nancy Jacobs (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027). In 2024-2025, I served as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. I sit on the council of the American Society for Environmental History and the board of the Asian Association for Environmental History.

Publications:

“The Insignificance of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Premodern Anatolian History.” In Aquatic Worlds of Anatolia, edited by Alexis Wick, Alexis Rappas, and Matthew Harpster, 25-36. Istanbul: Koç University Press, 2025. Published in Turkish translation as: “Modern Dönem Öncesi Anadolu Tarihinde Dicle ve Fırat Nehirlerinin Görece Önemsizliği.” In Anadolu’nun Su Dünyaları, edited by Alexis Wick, Alexis Rappas, and Matthew Harpster, 27-38. Istanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2025.

“Toprağın ve İklimin Yön Verdiği Güzergâh.” Derin Tarih 32 (July 2025): 72-77.

“The Environmental History of the Middle East,” in A Companion to Global Environmental History, ed. J. R. McNeill and Erin Steward Mauldin, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2025), 137-150. Co-authored with Alan Mikhail.

“The Ottoman Transfer of Military Expertise and Technology from the Mediterranean World to the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, 1534-1780,” Rivista di studi storici del Mediterraneo 1 (2025): 3-22.

“Türkiye’de Çevre Tarihi Yazımının Serüveni,” Toplum ve Bilim 169-170 (2024): 111-134.

“To Dam or Not to Dam: The Social Construction of an Ottoman Hydraulic Project, 1701-02,” Technology and Culture 64, no. 2 (2023): 456-484. Winner of the Society for the History of Technology’s Abbot Payson Usher Prize

“Water for the Saints of Baghdad: The Hydrology of a Sacred Ottoman Geography,” Journal of Early Modern History 25, no. 4 (2021): 319-344.

“Sediment of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: An Early Modern Perspective,” Water History 13, no. 1 (2021): 13-32.

Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). Turkish translation appeared as: Sultan’ın Nehirleri: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Dicle ve Fırat, trans. Bestami S. Bilgiç (Istanbul: Timaş, 2023). Winner of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association’s Book Prize and finalist for the American Society for Environmental History’s George Perkins Marsh Prize.

“Changes in the Euphrates River: Ecology and Politics in a Rural Ottoman Periphery, 1687-1702,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 47, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 1-25. Winner of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association’s Ömer Lütfi Barkan Prize

“In the Bellies of the Marshes: Water and Power in the Countryside of Ottoman Baghdad,” Environmental History 19, no. 4 (2014): 638-664. Winner of the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society’s Leopold-Hidy Prize.

Awards and Fellowships:

Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, 2024-2025

Landhaus Fellow, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2022

Kluge Fellow, The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, 2021

Residential Fellow, The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, 2019-2020

Dissertation Award, The Academic Research Institute in Iraq, 2019

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2017-2018

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 2016-2017

Dissertation Writing Grant, The Institute of Turkish Studies, 2016-2017

Recent Courses:

HIST 1: Western Civilization I

HIST 106: Early Modern Empires of Islam: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals

HIST 186: The Silk Roads

HIST 302W: Global Environmental Change from Genghis Khan to Frankenstein

HIST 472: The Ottoman Empire

HIST 510: Early Modern Environmental History

HIST 561: The Ottoman Empire