Dr Yakoob Ahmed is a PhD graduate from SOAS, University of London. An Ottoman historian, he is currently teaching Islamic history at Istanbul University and was a visiting fellow at the Modern Turkish Studies Centre at Istanbul Şehir University. His research focuses are Muslim intellectual thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Islamic constitutionalism, identity, nationalism and collective memory construction.
On the grand reopening of Masjid Aya Sophia, Ottoman historian Dr Yakoob Ahmed discusses the history and broader Eurocentric discourses surrounding the Hagia Sophia, Islamic history and conquest.