Ahmet T. Karamustafa is Professor of History and Religious Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His expertise is in social and intellectual history of premodern Islam as well as in theory and method in the study of religion. He earned his B.A. in Philosophy at Hamilton College and M.A. and Ph.D in Islamic Studies at McGill University. He is the author of God's Unruly Friends (University of Utah Press, 1994), a book on ascetic movements in medieval Islam, and Vahidi's Menakib-i Hvoca-i Cihan ve Netice-i Can (The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1993), a study of a sixteenth-century mystical text. He also served as an editor for, and wrote several articles in, Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies (University of Chicago Press, 1992). More recently, he completed a comprehensive historical overview of early Islamic mysticism titled Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh University Press & University of California Press, 2007). At Washington University, Karamustafa has held several administrative positions, including a five-year term as director of the Religious Studies Program. Currently, he is the vice-president of the American Research Institute in Turkey and a member of the Steering Committee of the Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion.

Ahmet T Karamustafa: Busch Hall 119;Campus Box 1062, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130; (314) 935-4446; akaramus@artsci.wustl.edu