Allen Fromherz
Professor History Department, Director of the Middle East Studies Center History, Middle East Studies Center- Education
Dr. Allen Fromherz received his Ph.D. in Islamic History from St. Andrews University in St. Andrews, Scotland under the supervision of Professor Hugh Kennedy in 2006. His dissertation focused on the rise of the Almohad Empire in twelfth-century North Africa. He holds a BA Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College, 2002.
- Specializations
Middle East History; Arabian and Gulf History; North African History; Mediterranean History; Medieval Studies; Middle East Studies; Islamic Studies; Medieval Iberian
- Biography
Dr. Allen Fromherz is a Professor of Middle East, Gulf and Mediterranean history. He directs the Middle East Studies Center at GSU and was President of the American Institute for Maghreb Studies (2015-2021). He is founding series editor, with Matt Buehler, of Edinburgh Studies on the Maghrib and is North Africa senior editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia Africa. Since 2024, he is also Co-Chair of the Monsoon Book Prizes, which celebrate the archaeology, history and political economy of the Indian Ocean world.
Research Interests
Dr. Allen Fromherz’s research focuses on the history of the Mediterranean and the Gulf. His latest book, The Center of the World, A History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present, is published by University of California Press. Each chapter centers on a different port around the Gulf. From ancient Dilmun to medieval Basra to modern Dubai, The Center of the World shows how the people of the Gulf adapted to larger changes in world history, creating a system of free trade, merchant rule, and commerce that connected the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean and continues to define the region today.
His first two books, The Almohads: the Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris) and Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times (Edinburgh University Press) examined rapid change in lineage-based societies, especially the rise of the Almohads in the 12th Century. Originating in the Atlas Mountains, the Almohads controlled much of the Western Mediterranean. His work on the life and writings of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (d. 1406), a great historical thinker, inspired Dr. Fromherz’s recent interest in the countries of the Gulf. Examining questions of change, modernization, identity and culture, his book Qatar, A Modern History, Georgetown 2013, look beneath the surface of oil and gas wealth and examines the importance of memory, lineage and loyalty in Qatari and Gulf society from the 19th century to the present. His 2016 book with Edinburgh University Press examines North Africa and Western Europe as part of the same cultural zone in the medieval period, it is entitled The Near West: Medieval North Africa, Latin Europe and the Mediterranean in the Second Axial Age, 2016. He has written several chapters in edited collections, including a chapter in A Companion to Islamic Granada (ed. B. Boloix-Gallardo 2021) and received a Senior Fulbright Scholarship to Granada, Spain in 2022 to research a biography of the poet and minister Ibn al-Khatib, a book under contract with Edinburgh University Press.
Dr. Fromherz has edited three volumes: the Gulf in World History, Arabia at the Global Crossroads (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and, with Nadav Samin, Knowledge, Authority and Change in Islamic Societies: Studies in Honor of Dale Eickelman (Brill, 2021). Also, Sultan Qaboos and Modern Oman (1970-2020), edited with Abdulrahman al Salimi and based on a conference to be held at GSU, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022.
He has made several media appearances and written op-eds for major media outlets.
- “Saudi Arabia, Other Countries Break Ties with Qatar” NPR All Things Considered Interview
- “How Qatar Punches Above its Weight” All Things Considered Interview
- “GSU Professor Provides Context for Iranian Conflict” WABE with Jim Buress
- “Why does the US have a Long History of Conflict with the Middle East?” 11 ALIVE Atlanta (Also syndicated nationally)
- LA TIMES Op-ED “The Strait of Hormuz, An Ancient Tinderbox…”
- Foreign Affairs, “The Secret of the Sheikhs”
- Publications
