Muhammed Niyas Ashraf is a Doctoral Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Culture and Societies, Freie University Berlin. His Ph.D. project ‘Locating Muslim Piety: Arabic- Malayalam Devotional Poetry of Mappilas in the nineteenth century Indian Ocean Littoral’ unravels the different expressions of Islamic piety reflected in Arabic-Malayalam literature under the supervision of Prof. Torsten Tschacher. He received his M.Phil. in History from the University of Delhi for his dissertation titled ‘Reading Makti Tangal: Islamic Modernity and Reform in Colonial Kerala, 1884-1912’. His recent publication includes ‘Modernity and Reform in Colonial Kerala: Revisiting the Contributions of Sayyid Sanaullah Makti Tangal’ (Social Orbit, 2017) and edited three volumes of ‘Dictionary of Martyrs: India’s Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947’ (ICHR, 2019).
Lectures:
- Saintly/Sufi Piety in Mālā Literature: Muslim Liturgical Sphere and Cult of Sufi Saints in the Nineteenth Century Malabar