# Saaleh Baseer ![Saaleh sits smiling in a wooden chair, holding papers, with bookshelves filling the background.](/sites/g/files/omnuum4421/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2026-03/Picture%20of%20Saaleh%20Baseer.jpg?itok=hLYwSTai) email Saaleh entered as a doctoral candidate in Harvard's joint History & Middle Eastern program in 2023. His interests are housed in the Hanafi legal regime and Islamic constitutional law in the post-classical era in Iran and Mughal India and their counterparts in the constitutional formation of 18th century America, and Florence and Venice in the **Quattrocento**. Saaleh completed a six-year *Dars-i Nizami* curriculum at Darul Uloom Azaadville in South Africa, where he was authorized (*mujāz*) in Arabic, Islamic law, Hadith, Quranic exegesis, and Ash'ari theology, concluding with the six canonical texts containing reports from the Prophet. He thereafter earned his BA at Columbia University in History in 2019. He spent three years at Darul Qasim College where he studied the art of legal responsa per Hanafi doctrine and the mystical texts of Shah Wali Allah and Ibn 'Arabi. Raised in the sweeping, montane part of California, his family hails from the city-state of Haiderabad. He has recently written on the death of Urdu in America and a two-hundred page essay on the enduring legacy of Shah Wali Allah. - ## People Categories [Graduate Students](/graduate_students) - ## Specialty (Graduate Students) [Middle East](/specialty-graduate-students/middle-east) [South Asia](/specialty-graduate-students/south-asia)