In recent years, professor Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila’s research has focused on cultural interaction in the Middle East. He heads Fidipro project The Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient Near East, financed by the Academy of Finland. The project examines a time period lasting over 2000 years during which cultural influence between the Middle East (cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia, Arabian-Islamic culture) and Greece flowed in both directions. In his latest research, Hämeen-Anttila has focused on pre-Islamic Persia and the interaction within the Arabian cultures, especially in literature and historiography between 500 and 1000 AD.

The most internationally significant monographs (scientific publications on a single subject) are the 500-page long 2002 study on Arabian classical literature, Maqama.The History of a Genre (Harrassowitz) and the slightly shorter 2006 study on paganism in the early Islamic era, The Last Pagans of Iraq. Ibn Wahshiyya and His Nabatean Agriculture (Brill). He has contributed to many international scientific encyclopaedias (including The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill); The Encyclopaedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Walter de Gruyter) and has published articles under other reputable publishers, such as the Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Eisenbrauns and Peeters.

Further information:

• Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko An Old-Fashioned Genre. Maqāma in the 18th Century
• Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko The Last Pagans of Iraq. Ibn Wahshiyya and His Nabatean Agriculture
• Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient Near East project online