Travis Zadeh wins 2026 Haskins Medal for "Wonders and Rarities"

Travis Zadeh, Professor of Religious Studies, has been awarded the 2026 Haskins Medal for his book, Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book that Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos (Harvard University Press, 2023).  

The Haskins Medal is the most prestigious award granted by the Medieval Academy of America. The award is granted annually to recognize “a book of exceptional importance and transformative influence, through a work that not only displays rigorous research but also opens new directions for the field.”

Zadeh’s book follows the many travels of a natural history produced in thirteenth-century Iraq by the Persian judge and naturalist Zakariyya Qazwini.  

“In his fabulous dialogue with Wonders of Things Created, Zadeh pairs the most rigorous scholarship, incisive inquisitiveness, and entertaining narratives to conjure up lives, feelings, and ideas from other worlds,” wrote the Haskins Medal prize committee. “With this tribute to Qazwini’s methodological wonder, Travis Zadeh crowns his own achievement, a sensitive and convincing demonstration that there is room in our modern epistemologies for the dynamic openness of wonder.”  

On receiving the Haskins Medal, Zadeh said: “Wonders and Rarities was a labor of love; it is a book within a book, set to craft a world through words, tracing the shifting patterns of learning, value, and sensibility. Receiving the Haskins Medal is a profound distinction.”

This is the fourth prize for Zadeh’s Wonders and Rarities. The book was awarded the 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Middle Eastern Studies by the Modern Language Association of America; the 2024 PROSE Award in World History by the Association of American Publishers; and the 2024 Parviz Shahriari Book Award for History of Mathematics, Science and Technology from the Association for Iranian Studies.

Zadeh was honored at an award ceremony in March as part of the Medieval Academy of America’s annual meeting.