Daphna Ephrat, Ph.D. (1993), is Associate Professor of history at the Open University of Israel. She has written widely on the formation of religious leadership and associations in the medieval Islamic Near East, including Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety (Harvard UP, 2009).

Ethel Sara Wolper, Ph.D. (1990), is Associate Professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia (Penn State University Press, 2003) and has published widely on Islamic architecture and religious communities in the medieval and early modern Islamic world.

Paulo G. Pinto, Ph.D. (2002), is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil. He has done ethnographic fieldwork in Syria, Iraq, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, and is the co-editor of Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices (Edinburgh University Press, 2012).