Matthew Steele

Matthew is a scholar of Islamic law in Africa. His research pairs the close study of Islamic legal texts with historical ethnography of their reception by Muslims in early modern and colonial Africa. Matthew specializes on the development of the Mālikī school (madhhab) of jurisprudence on the continent, reconstructing its history from seventeenth-century Mauritania to twenty-first-century Sudan. He has previously studied or conducted fieldwork in Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania and Sudan. Matthew received his B.A. from Swarthmore College, M.A. from Dartmouth College, and Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. In 2023/2024 he served as a research fellow in Yale Law School’s Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization. He currently serves as a visiting lecturer in Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies.