Faisal Husain

I am an environmental historian of the Ottoman Empire, with a geographical focus on its eastern provinces in Anatolia and Iraq and a temporal focus on the early modern period. My first book, Rivers of the Sultan, examined the role of the Tigris and Euphrates in the establishment of Ottoman state institutions in the Ottoman eastern borderland between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. My second book project is an environmental history of Ottoman frontier expansion east of the Euphrates during the sixteenth century. Besides, I am co-editing a book on the global histories of animals (under contract with Oxford University Press) with Emily Wakild (Boise State University) and Nancy Jacobs (Brown University). In 2024-2025, I will serve as a senior lecturer at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. I currently serve on the editorial boards of Karaelmas Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University), Marmara Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi (Marmara University), Uluslararası Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi (Kırşehir Ahi Evran University), Global Environment (White Horse Press), and the “Middle East Environmental Histories” book series (Leiden University Press).

Publications:

“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