'A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah (d. 923 H/1517 AD) of Damascus was one of the great women scholars in Islamic history. A mystic and prolific poet and writer, 'A'ishah
composed more works in Arabic than any other woman before the 20th century.
Th. Emil Homerin is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion&Classics at the University of Rochester, where he teaches courses on Islam, classical Arabic literature, and mysticism. Homerin completed his Ph.D. with honors at the University of Chicago ('87), and he has lived and worked in Egypt and Turkey for a number of years.
Ros Ballaster is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Oxford and professorial fellow in English at Mansfield College. Two monographs, Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction 1684-1740 (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Fabulous Orients: Fictions of the East in England 1662-1785 (Oxford University Press, 2005), investigate the importance of fantasy in the shaping of the eighteenth-century English novel.
