Prof. Michal Biran is a historian of Central Asia, the medieval Islamic world and Imperial China. She is a Max and Sophie Mydans Foundation Professor in the Humanities and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Biran also teaches in the Department of Asian Studies. Biran's main research area is the history of the Mongol Empire (13th-14th centuries) and intercultural contacts between China, nomad empires, the Islamic world and Europe in the premodern era. She led a large ERC-funded research project as well as coedited The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire (with Kim Hodong, 2 vols., 2023). Currently she is directing a project funded by the ISF, together with Prof. Gideon Shelach-Lavi, on steppe towns in medieval Mongolia (8th-14th centuries). Together with Prof. Yuri Pines, she is also conducting a project on comparative study of Eurasian empires. Her multiple publications also deal with the history of Central Asia in the Mongol and pre-Mongol period (mainly 10th-14th centuries), focusing on mobility and migration, historical memory, nomad culture, as well as the Ilkhan state in Iran and Baghdad under Mongol rule. In the Department, she teaches seminars and advanced courses on Islam in the Middle Ages, the Silk Roads, Central Asia and the Mongol Empire, as well as a writing workshop for graduate research students of the Institute of Asian and African studies, which she headed until 2025-26. In addition, she guides academic tours to Mongolia and China, and next summer to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well (with Michael Shenkar).
Courses taught:
The Silk Roads: Academic Tour in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (Summer 20260; Between China and the Middle east: Issues in Central Asian History (BA seminar); the Mongols in the Islamic World (BA seminar); The Ilkhan State (MA Seminar); Intercultural Contacts in the Medieval Islamic World (BA & MA seminar); The Mongol Empire from a Biographic Perspective (textual course, MA); Eurasian Nomads in World History (MA seminar); Eurasian Empires from a Comparative Perspective (MA seminar); Writing Workshops for Graduate Research Students.
Recent publications:
Biran, Michal and Yuri Pines. 2023. All Under Heaven, Vol 3: Late Imperial China. Raanana: Open University (Hebrew).
Michal Biran and Kim Hodong, ed. 2023. The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316337424
Rüpke, Jörg, Michal Biran and Yuri Pines. 2024. Empires and Gods: The Role of Religions in Imperial History. Berlin: De Gruyter, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111342009
Amir, Or, Michal Biran, and Jonathan Brack, eds. 2024. "Mamluks and Mongols: Studies in Honor of Reuven Amitai". Mamluk Studies Review 27.
https://knowledge.uchicago.edu/search?cc=Maml%C5%ABk+Studies+Review%2C+V...
Biran, Michal and Ishayahu Landa, eds. 2025. "The 14th century Chinggisid Crisis". Special Issue of Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 35(1).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-asiatic-soc...
Biran, Michal. 2023. "Mongol Central Asia: The Chaghadaids and the Ögödeids.” In The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire: Vol. 1, edited by Michal Biran and Kim Hodong, 319–396. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Amitai, Reuven, and Michal Biran. 2023. "Arabic Sources." In The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire, edited by Michal Biran and Kim Hodong, 131–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biran, Michal. “Religions in the Mongol Empire Revisited: Exchange, Conversion, Consequences.” In Empires and Gods: The Role of Religions in Imperial History, edited by Jörg Rüpke, Michal Biran, and Yuri Pines, 232–262. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111342009-011.
Biran, Michal. “Islamic Expansion into Central Asia and Muslim-Buddhist Encounters.” 2024. In Buddhism in Central Asia III, edited by Lewis Doney, Carmen Meinert, Henrik H. Sørensen, and Yukiyo Kasai, 13–64. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004687288_003.
Biran, Michal, Michael Shenkar, Kubatbek Tabaldiev, Kunbolot Akmatov, and Valery Kolchenko. 2023. “The Kök-Tash Underground Mausoleum in North-Eastern Kyrgyzstan: The First-ever Identified Qara Khitai Elite Tomb.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 23(3): 1–33.
Brack, Jonathan, Michal Biran, and Reuven Amitai. 2024. “Plague and the Mongol Conquest of Baghdad (1258)? A Reevaluation of the Sources.” Medical History. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2023.38.
Biran, Michal. 2024. “Asaf b. Berakhya in the Mongol and Mamluk Realms: Between Vizier and Magic.” Mamluk Studies Review 27: 1-27.
https://doi.org/10.6082/W2BH-4P45
Biran, Michal, and Ishayahu Landa. 2025. “The Chinggisid Crisis of the Mid-Fourteenth Century: Reasons and Consequences.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 35 (1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186324000294.