Juan Cole - Academic Interests

Academic Interests

Cole became interested in Islam and Arabic while a teenager living in Eritrea when his father was stationed there. He studied Arabic at Northwestern University, in Beirut, at the American University in Cairo, and at the University of California, Los Angeles, including classical historical, theological and philosophical texts and classical and modern literature. He speaks Arabic (Modern Standard as well as Lebanese and Egyptian dialects), Persian, and Urdu, and reads the Ottoman form of the Turkish. He also knows French, German and Spanish.