# Carole Hillenbrand

Carole Hillenbrand CBE FBA (born 1943), is a British Islamic scholar who is Emerita Professor in Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh and Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews. She is the Vice-President of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies and a Member of the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics.

## Early life

Hillenbrand was born in 1943 in England. In 1962, she enrolled at Girton College, Cambridge, where she studied modern languages. She then attended Somerville College at Oxford, where she studied Arabic and Turkish.

## Academic career

Hillenbrand gained a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages from the University of Cambridge in 1965 and a BA in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford in 1972. She earned her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1979. Her thesis, The history of the Jazira 1100–1150: the contribution of Ibn Al-Azraq al-Fariqi, analysed and translated a pair of British Library manuscripts of a text by the 12th-century Artuqid historian ibn al-Azraq al-Fariqi.
Her research interests include: the Crusades; Islamic political thought; medieval and modern concepts of jihad; Arabic and Persian travel literature. Dr. Hillenbrand serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals including the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies and the International Advisory Board of The UMRAN – International Journal of Islamic and Civilizational Studies, University of Technology, Malaysia.
Invited by an interviewer in 2018 to venture an opinion on whether the Muslims who had encountered westerners in the Holy Land during the time of the crusades had seen the best of Western Christendom in their midst, Hillenbrand agreed that - with notable and distinguished exceptions - they almost certainly had not: "The most important thing that most of the crusaders who remained in the Holy Land learned ... was to use soap".

## Honours

* 2005: Hillenbrand was the first non-Muslim to be awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies.
* 2009: New Year Honours as Hillenbrand was appointed as Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
* 2016: Awarded the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding by the British Academy for her book Islam: A New Historical Introduction.
* 2018: Hillenbrand was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours "for services to the Understanding of Islamic History". In the same year she also became an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.

## Works

* The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (2000)
* Islam: A New Historical Introduction. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. (2015) ISBN 978-0-500-11027-0

## Footnotes

* 1 2 "Carole Hillenbrand". NNDB. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
* 1 2 Back cover of her book of 2015, Islam: A New Historical Introduction
* 1 2 3 Houghton, Robert; Peters, Damien (2017). The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives: Islamic Perspectives. CRC Press. p. 13. ISBN 9781351353045.
* ↑ "Professor Carole Hillenbrand". www.crusaderstudies.org.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
* ↑ Goodwin, Stephen R., ed. (2009). World Christianity in Muslim Encounter: Essays in Memory of David A. Kerr (illustrated ed.). A&C Black. p. x. ISBN 9781847065117.
* ↑ Hillenbrand, C. (1979). "The history of the Jazira 1100-1150: the contribution of Ibn Al-Azraq al-Fariqi". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
* ↑ Johannes Saltzwedel (September 2018). ""Fremde wie ausserirdische": Wie reagierten die Muslime auf die Invasion? Die Historikerin Carole Hillenbrand erklärt, wie die Gegenwehr zum Dschihad wurde". Geschichte 5/2018. Der Spiegel. pp. 30–35.
* ↑ "No. 58929". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2008. p. 10.
* ↑ "2016 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding awarded to Professor Carole Hillenbrand". British Academy. 1 November 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2017.
* ↑ "Birthday Honours List - United Kingdom". London Gazette. Supplement No. 1: B8. 9 June 2018.
* ↑ "Somervillians recognised in Queen's Birthday Honours". www.some.ox.ac.uk. 19 June 2018.
* ↑ "Professor Carole Hillenbrand". www.some.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
* ↑ Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, Edinburgh University Press, 1999