About the Author

Heinz Halm is Professor of Islamic history at the University of Tubingen and Editor of Die Welt des Orients. A leading German Islamicist and an authority in Ismaili studies, he is author of numerous books, including Kosmologie und Heilslehre der fruhen Isma'iliya (Wiesbaden, 1978), Die islamische Gnosis (Zurich, 1982), Shiism (Islamic Surveys, Edinburgh 1991), and The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids (Leiden, 1996).