Shawkat M. ToorawaShawkat Toorawa is Associate Professor of Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture: A Ninth Century Bookman in Baghdad (2005), and the editor and coeditor of sevral collections, including The Western Indian Ocean: Essays on Islands and Islanders (2007) and Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith (2011). He is a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow, an Executive Editor of the Library of Arabic Literature, and serves on the editorial boards of Middle Eastern Literatures and the Journal of Abbasid Studies. Read More Read Less