RTHUR JOHN ARBERRY (1905-1969 )born at Portsmouth, was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambidge, where he read classics and oriental languages. After spending three years in Egypt, he was a civil servant from 1934 to 1944. During the 1939-45 was he worked in the Postal Censhorship (Uncommon Languages Department) and the Ministry of Information. In 1944 he was elected Professor of Persian in the University of London, in 1946 Professor of Arabic there, and in 1947 Professor of Arabic at Cambridge. He was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Member of the Egyptian, Syrian, and Persian Academies.

WILLIAM C. CHITTICK is a professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Prof. Chittick specializes in Islamic intellectual history, especially the philosophical and mystical theology of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as reflected in Arabic and Persian texts. He has also investigated the manner in which texts have been put into practice in the Sufi orders, which have dominated much of popular Islam down to the present. He received his Ph.D degree from University of Tehran, Iran, in 1974.

IBRAHIM GAMARD (1947 -) is an American amateur Rumi scholar. Dr. Gamard is a licensed psychologist in California (Ph.D., Psychology, 1986). But his passion is translating Rumi’s poetry inhis spare time. He taught himself classical Persian (starting in 1981) for the sole purpose of reading Rumi in the original language. In 1985, he began collaborating with an Afghan scholar in a translation of Rumi’s quatrains (unpublished).He has been active on the Internet (translation issues concerrning the popular versions of Rumi’s poetry, since 12/97; translations of selections from the Masnavi, with commentary and transliterationof the Persian text, since 6/99).Presently (9/01), he has nearly completed a website (dar-al-masnavi.org) containing all his translated Masnavi selections.

REYNOLD ALLEYNE NICHOLSON (1868-1945), son of Henry Alleyne Nicholson, F.R.S., was educated at Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Trinity College, Cambrdige, where he read for the Classical Tripos and the Inidan Language Tripos, being elected to a fellowship in 1893. In 1901 he was appointed Professor of Persian at University College, London, but two years later returned to Cambridge as lecturer in Persian. He succeeded E.G. Browne in 1926 as Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic, and retired in 1933. He was a most prolific author, editor, and translator, specializing in literature and mysticism. His best-known works are his Literary History of the Arabs and his great edition and translation of Rumi.

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL (1922 – ), is former Professor of the History of Religion in the Faculty of Islamic Theology at Ankara University (1954-1959) teaching religion in Turkish, former Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Bonn (1961-1966), and former Professor of Indo-Muslim Culture at Harvard University (1969-1992) where she taught until her retirement. She then returned to Bonn and became an honorary Professor at the University. She has written more than 80 books and essays. Her main scholarly fields have been Islamic literatures, Islamic mysticism and Sufism. Her books on ‘Mystical Dimensions of Islam’, on Maulana Jalal-ud-din Rumi, and ‘Deciphering the Signs of God’ have made a major contribution towards understanding the very essence of Islam.