Dr Edith X Chen

I am a historian of the pre-modern Near East focusing on the Mongol Empire and Iran. My interests include Islamic history, legal history, and the transmission of people and ideas across Eurasia. As an undergraduate, I studied Public Policy and Islamic Studies at Duke University. Afterward, I attended Boston College Law School for a year and interned at the Boston Juvenile Court. While enjoying most of the 1L curriculum, especially constitutional law and (even) civil procedure, I realized that I did not wish to pursue a legal career. Nevertheless, I harbor an abiding interest in the development of law, procedures, and legal theories, and what these reveal about social history. In 2012 I received a FLAS fellowship and later obtained a Masters in Middle East Studies from Harvard. While attending the lectures there, I became more inspired by medieval Islamic history and the questions it raises regarding the relationships between individuals, society, the courts, and the law, especially in the post-classical period (13-15th centuries). In 2019-2020 I received a Fulbright and was a visiting researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I completed my doctoral studies at Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies in 2021.

Research Interests

I am interested in those moments in history where different peoples were brought into interaction with one another and the products and consequences of such encounters. My dissertation examines the history of the Mongol presence in Iran (13-14th centuries) through its relationship with the local dynasties located along the Persian Gulf. Unlike the large-scale devastation that occurred elsewhere, this region enjoyed mostly peaceful relations with the Mongol rulers and flourished during this time. The concept of vassalage in the Mongol Empire (including its territories in China, Russia, and Central Asia in addition to the Middle East) will be explored more extensively in my monograph. I am also preparing a few shorter pieces on developments in Islamic law and society in Mongol Iran.