Richard Bulliet

Richard W. Bulliet
Born	(1940-10-30) October 30, 1940 Rockford, Illinois
Occupation	author, university professor
Nationality	American

Richard W. Bulliet is a professor of history at Columbia University who specializes in the history of Islamic society and institutions, the history of technology, and the history of the role of animals in human society.

Early life and education

Bulliet grew up in Illinois. He attended Harvard, from which he received a BA in 1962 and a PhD in 1967. He is the grandson of Clarence Joseph ("C.J.") Bulliet, the art critic and journalist.

Work

Several of his books focus on Iran but deal also with the larger Muslim world, including The Patricians of Nishapur: a Study in Medieval Islamic History (1972), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (1979), and Islam: the View from the Edge (1994). His books on a broader view of Islamic history and society include Under Siege: Islam and Democracy (1994) and The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004). His book The Camel and the Wheel (1975) brings together his interest in the histories of technology, animal domestication, and the Middle East, dealing for example with the significant military advantage early Muslim armies gained from a slight improvement in the design of cloth camel saddles. He would return to the history of animal domestication with his Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (2005).

Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships presents the four stages of human-animal relationship history: separation (when humans began to consider themselves as fundamentally separate from animals), pre-domestication (rich in symbolic expression of animals), domestication (exploiting and taming animals for human use), and post-domestication (our current industrialized consumption and separation from domestic animals).^[1]

He is the writer and editor of books of more general interest as well, including The Columbia History of the Twentieth Century (editor, 1998), The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (co-editor, 1996), and The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History (co-author, 1997). He has also written several novels which draw on his knowledge of international politics and the Middle East, and is a promoter of the validity of comics as an art form.

His first fiction book, Kicked to Death by a Camel (1973), was nominated for an Edgar for "Best First Mystery". His other fiction includes Tomb of the Twelfth Imam (1979), The Gulf Scenario (1984), The Sufi Fiddle (1991), and The One-Donkey Solution (2011).

Columbia University filmed a series of lectures given by Bulliet to his World History I class, and made them public on YouTube. Columbia also recorded Bulliet's "History of the Modern Middle East" course and offer it free of charge on iTunes.^[2]

In March 2012, the British Council sponsored a video of Bulliet discussing the "Historic Roots of Muslims in Europe" and made that available on YouTube.^[3]

Bulliet's commentaries and opinion pieces on the Middle East, as well as his latest writings on animal domestication and "post-domesticity," have appeared in major newspapers around the world, including the Guardian,^[4] New York Times International,^[5] and Süddeutsche Zeitung.^[6] His commentaries are syndicated by Agence Global. ß According to an interview in Columbia magazine's Fall 2007 edition, Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger credits Bulliet with the idea for inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus on September 24, 2007.^[7]

References

External links

• Bulliet's Columbia Homepage
• University Student Review
• Bulliet's address to the Dialogue among Civilizations, United Nations, New York City, 5 September 2000
• Islam: The View from the Edge back cover matter
• Agence Global

Authority control VIAF: 60193813 ISNI: 0000 0001 0906 6610 BNF: cb12483258c

Persondata
Name	Bulliet, Richard
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Date of birth	1940-10-30
Place of birth	Rockford, Illinois
Date of death
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