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My MA dissertation at the University of Medina was entitled Makalat al-Jahim

Ibn Safwan wa Atheroha Filfer al-Islamiyah, the theological positions of somebody by the name of

Jahim Ibn Safwan, who died a 127-hidra, also very early on, and his effects on Islamic sects and

shisms, how he has impacted Islamic theology. As you're aware, dissertations in our part of the

world are very deep, very dense. I spent four years studying a obscure figure. I wrote 850 pages

in Arabic. It is published in two volumes. You can find it available still to this day in the

marketplace. I thought I know more about Jahim Ibn Safwan than anybody in the world who would

possibly know more than me. I spent four years studying this guy and wrote an entire dissertation

and it got top honors, awarded everything. My advisor loved it, published and whatnot.

So I get accepted to Yale and I walk in 2005 was the year. I walk into their sterling library.

By the way, their Arabic collection was manifold many times more larger than our collection in Medina,

but that's the surface we're all together. And I said, what can these guys possibly know about

Jahim Ibn Safwan? So I did my search. This is my first week at Yale. I did my search here and I found

an article written before I was born in the 1960s by Richard M. Frank, a very well-known academic

orientalist they called them back in the day, entitled The Neo-Platanism of Jahim Ibn Safwan.

Written in 1968, before even I was born. And intrigued, I requested it within milliseconds,

you know they have a system, you get it. And I remember reading through that article three times,

not understanding anything of what he was trying to convey. And I remember thinking,

this is a totally different world. I have an MA dissertation on this person and this guy has

...