Lev Weitz is an historian of the Islamic Middle East. His scholarly interests lie in the encounters among Muslims, Christians, and Jews that have shaped the Middle East’s history from the coming of Islam to the present, which he engages in his research and in the classroom.

Dr. Weitz's book Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) examines the multiconfessional society of early Islam through the lens of shifting marital practices of Syriac Christian communities, arguing that interreligious negotiations lie at the heart of the history of the medieval Islamic empire. 

On the Edge: Global Transformations in the Medieval Egyptian Countryside, Dr. Weitz's current book project, explores how the Muslim and Christian societies of an out-of-the-way corner of Egypt experienced global trends— the expansion of Islam, the rise of Arabic, trade and slavery across the Nile and Sahara—that transformed Afro-Eurasia on either side of the year 1000.

At Catholic University, Dr. Weitz teaches a range of courses on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean history from the Middle Ages to modernity and directs the Islamic World Studies program.

  Click here for vita.

Click here to watch Dr. Weitz speak on Religious Minorities in the Modern Middle East

Click here for a view into Muslim-Christian relations in medieval Egypt via Dr. Weitz's recent work at the Library of Congress.