Dr Morteza Karimi-Nia is an associate member of the Academy of Sciences of Iran. He studied Islamic theology traditionally at Qom Seminary (al-Ḥawza al-ʿIlmīyya) and Qurʾānic and Ḥadith Studies academically at the University of Tehran. His two main fields of study are early Qurʾānic manuscripts and the history of tafsir. With over 100 Persian, Arabic, and English articles, as well as several monographs on the Qurʾān and 12 years of teaching and research experience at Islamic Azad University (Tehran), he is recognised as a Muslim scholar in Qurʾānic studies in Iran. His encyclopedic work, Bibliography of Qurʾānic Studies in European Languages (Tehran, 2012), has also engaged him with Western scholarship on the Qurʾān. Since 2010, he has been involved in Qurʾān-manuscript studies. His recent facsimile edition of Codex Mashhad received widespread praise for its comprehensiveness from both Muslim and Western scholars. Another of his research fields is the history of tafsir in the early periods, focusing on the encounters between Shiʿa, Sunni, and Muʿtazili exegetes during the 4th-6th AH centuries.
During his time at AMI, Dr Karimi-Nia will be participating in the two-day Qur’anic Studies conference and will also be delivering a research seminar.
