Roxani Margariti
Photo: Annette Hornischer

Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University, Georgia

Nina Maria Gorrissen Fellow in History - Class of Spring 2016

Roxani Margariti began teaching at Emory University in 2002, after completing her PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Her research interests focus on Middle Eastern and Indian Ocean social and economic history, with an emphasis on maritime history and material culture. She has participated in archaeological excavations and surveys in England, Greece, Turkey, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Margariti was a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her work has also been supported by the Getty Foundation and Fordham University’s Center for Medieval Studies.

 

Margariti’s first book, Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (2007), was a study of urban topography and commercial institutions at the Yemeni port. She is also the co-editor of two volumes, Histories of the Middle East: Studies in Middle Eastern Economy, Society, and Law in Honor of A.L. Udovitch (2010) and Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Festschrift in Honor of Mark R. Cohen (2014).

Project Description

Insular Crossroads: The Local, Regional and Global Story of the Red Sea’s Dahlak Archipelago (tenth to seventeenth centuries)

At the Academy, Margariti continued her work on the history of the Dahlak archipelago in the southern Red Sea. She juxtaposes the history of local, regional, and transregional connections of the islands’ ethnically diverse, mobile community from the tenth to seventeenth centuries, a period of increasing commercial and political integration of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean worlds. Combining a micro-historical approach with a global historical perspective, her study offers a novel view of an insular Islamic polity located at the margins of powerful neighboring states.

Academy Activities

02 Mar 16

Fellow Spotlight: Roxani Margariti

Roxani Margariti is an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University. Her research interests focus on Middle Eastern and Indian Ocean social and economic history, with an emphasis on maritime history and material culture and s ...

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20 Apr 16

The View from Water’s Edge

Before the circumnavigation of Africa by the Portuguese, the corridor of the Red Sea had linked the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean world, where many of the most coveted goods of international trade originated. The Dahlak Archipelago, in the southern Red Sea, provided a set of stepping stones fo ...

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