Mojtaba Shahsavari is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto (2025-). His Ph.D. thesis focuses on Iranian intellectual history, particularly the concept of “sovereignty (salṭanat) of poverty” among mystic religious scholars in modern Iranian history as an alternative to formal clergy. He has authored articles and books on early Persian Sufism, including a recent conference presentation titled “Reconstructing Persian Sufi Networks: Introducing al-Khanqah al-Wajīhyya’s Role in Post-Ilkhanid Nishāpūr’s Sufism (Post 736/1335)” at the 13th International Conference on Language, Literature, History, and Civilization, Avicenna International Community College LLC, Tbilisi, Georgia (2025). Additionally, he wrote “Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī and His Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-Amthāl” (Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook, 2012).
Currently, under the supervision of Professor Tavakoli-Targhi, he is examining the institutional structures of medieval Iran and the evolving dynamics between the public and the state. His dissertation also explores the socio-psychological dimensions of Iranian identity formation in the pre-modern era. In parallel, he is critically editing and reviving classical Persian Sufi texts, emphasizing their intellectual contributions within the broader history of Persian intellectual thought.
He has received the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Scholarship (University of Toronto, Canada, 2024) and the Department of History’s Graduate Program Award (University of Toronto, Canada, 2024) for his MA research.
