David S. Powers

• Professor
• Islamic history and law
  Director of Graduate Studies

• 421 White Hall
• Phone: (607) 255-6275
• Fax: (607) 255-6450
• dsp4@cornell.edu

David S. Powers (Ph.D., Princeton, 1979) is a native of Cleveland, Ohio and long-suffering Cleveland Indians fan. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1979 and began teaching at Cornell in the same year. His courses deal with Islamic civilization, Islamic history and law, and classical Arabic texts, and his research focuses on the history of Islamic law and its application in Muslim societies. Powers is the author of Studies in Qur'an and Hadith: The Formation of the Islamic Law of Inheritance (California, 1986), Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300-1500 (Cambridge, 2002), and Muhammad is Not the Father of Any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet (University of Pennsylvania, 2009). He is founding editor of the journal Islamic Law and Society and Sectional Editor (Law) of the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam.