Adnan Adrian Wood-Smith

Adnan Adrian Wood-Smith

PhD Candidate
Islamic Studies
Wood-Smith, Adnan Adrian

Adnan Adrian Wood-Smith works on the Arabic poetry of West Africa, focusing specifically on Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse's poetry in praise of the Prophet Muhammad. Adnan seeks to understand and articulate the functions that the oral poetic traditions of Senegal and Mauritania's Muslim communities play in religious education, understanding of the spiritual path, and claims of spiritual and clerical authority. He has a hobby of translating Arabic poetry into English verse with the same meter and rhyme as the original, and a passion for teaching classical Arabic grammar. Adnan received his B.A. in Arabic from Dartmouth College and worked for five years as the Muslim Chaplain at Brown University before coming to Harvard.