Research Project

USA/UK

Michael Cook

2019 Balzan Prize for Islamic Studies

For the exceptional impact of his work on several research areas in Islamic Studies most notably: the study of the origin and early history of Islamic thought, the intellectual, social and political history of Islam through the ages, and the place of Islam in global history; for the outstanding quality of his scholarship in depth, temporal and geographical breadth, and methodological rigour as well as the use of a comparative approach; and for the meticulous philological analysis of primary sources in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, South Arabian, and Sanskrit.