Patricia Crone
Andrew W. Mellon
Professor
School of Historical Studies

Patricia Crone's research is focused on the Near East from late antiquity to the coming of the Mongols. She is interested in the delineation of the political, religious, and cultural environment in which Islam began and how it transformed, and was itself transformed by, the regions that the Arabs conquered. Originally a political, social, and military historian (some diversions notwithstanding), she has been steadily moving into the history of ideas. She now works mainly on the Qur’an and the cultural and religious traditions of Iraq, Iran, and the formerly Iranian part of Central Asia.

Ph.D., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1974; Senior Research Fellow, Warburg Institute, University of London, 1974–77; University of Oxford, University Lecturer in Islamic History, Fellow of Jesus College, 1977–90; University of Cambridge, Assistant University Lecturer, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, 1990–92, University Lecturer in Islamic Studies, 1992–94, University Reader in Islamic History, 1994–97; Institute for Advanced Study, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, 1997–.