Michele Bernardini
is Professor of Persian Language and Literature, and History of Iran and the Ottoman Empire at the Università di Napoli “l’Orientale”. He directs with Jürgen Paul the journal Eurasian Studies. Currently he is the Director of the Department of Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean at the Università di Napoli “l’Orientale”. Among his publications are ‘Abdallâh Hâtefi, I Sette scenari (Naples, 1995); Storia del mondo islamico (VII–XVI secolo), II. Il mondo iranico e turco (Torino, 2003); Mémoire et propagande à l’époque timouride (Paris, 2008); Ghiyāsoddīn ʿAlī di Yazd, Le gesta di Tamerlano (Milan, 2009); with R. Tottoli and M.L. Russo, Catalogue of the Islamic manuscripts from the Kahle Collection in the Department of Oriental Studies of the University of Turin (Rome, 2011); and with D. Guida, I Mongoli. Espansione, imperi, eredità (Turin, 2012).
Tülün Değirmenci
received her PhD degree in the Department of Art History at Hacettepe University in 2007 and has taught as an assistant professor of Art History Department at Pamukkale University since 2009. In her PhD dissertation, she focused on the relationship between the iconography of illustrated books and power struggles of the Ottoman court during the reign of Osman ii and her study was published as a book. Her present interest is how court-based narratives and images became popularized; how the interaction between two spheres, the court and the city, was manifested in the “popular” literary tradition and visual culture in the pre-modern Ottoman milieu. Her research interest also includes the history of books and reading practices of the Ottomans. Selected publications include: İktidar Oyunları ve Resimli Kitaplar: II. Osman Devrinde Değişen Güç Simgeleri (İstanbul, 2012); “Söz Bir Nesnedir ki, Zâil Olmaz: Osmanlı İstanbul’unda Hamzanâme Geleneğine Göre Kamusal Okuma (Hikâye-Resim-Kitap)”, Antik Çağ’dan XXI. Yüzyıla Büyük İstanbul Tarihi (Edebiyat-Kültür-Sanat) Cilt 7, ed. Hatice Aynur (2015); “Kahve Bahane Kahvehane Şahane: Bir Osmanlı Kahvehanesinin Portresi”, in Bir taşım keyif: Türk kahvesinin 500 yıllık öyküsü, ed. Ersu Pekin (İstanbul, 2015); “Osmanlı Tasvir Sanatında Görselin “Okunması”: İmgenin Ardındaki Hikayeler (Şehir Oğlanları ve İstanbul’un Melhur Kadınları)”, Osmanlı Araştırmaları /The Journal of Otttoman Studies xlv (2015); “An illustrated Mecmua: The commoners voice and the iconography of the court in seventeenth-century Ottoman painting”, Ars Orientalis 41 (2011); and “Bir kitabı kaç kişi okur? Osmanlı’da Okurlar ve Okuma Biçimleri Üzerine Bazı Gözlemler”, Tarih ve Toplum: Yeni Yaklaşımlar 13 (Aralık, 2011).
Fatma Sinem Eryilmaz
is a cultural historian of the early modern period with a special interest in the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean. She is a member of the
Alyssa Gabbay
is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago, where she specialised in classical Persian literature and medieval Islamic history. Gabbay is the author of Islamic tolerance: Amir Khusraw and pluralism (Abingdon, 2010) and numerous journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopaedia entries. In 2007, she received the Foundation for Iranian Studies’ award for Best Ph.D. Dissertation on a Topic of Iranian Studies. Her current research addresses descent from daughters in Islam by analysing hadith and other literature about Fatima, daughter of the Prophet.
Charles Melville
is Professor of Persian History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. Since 1999, he has been Director of the Shahnama Project, and since 2006 he has been President of The Islamic Manuscript Association (
Firuza Melville
is a graduate (
Shiva Mihan
is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and a member of Pembroke College. Her dissertation is on manuscript production in the first half of the 15th century in Herat under the patronage of the Timurid prince, Baysunghur (1399–1437), with a concentration on the famous Baysunghuri Shahnama, completed in 1430, now preserved in the Tehran Golestan Palace Library. She has been successful in identifying previously unknown or neglected manuscripts associated with his celebrated royal library. Her research interests include Islamic art, the Persian art of the book, the Herat School and codicology. Among her recent publications are: “On the term Keshti in the Baysunghuri ‘Arzeh-dasht”, IRAN, 2016; and “Hidden from scholarly eyes for a century: An unknown Baysunghuri manuscript sheds new light on his court and library”, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, online, 2016.
Raya Shani
has been teaching since 1997 Islamic art and architecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the School of Architecture at the Bezal’el Academy of the Arts in Jerusalem, with a two-year break for a visiting professorship at the departments of Art History and Near Eastern Studies in
Maria Szuppe
is senior researcher (directrice de recherche) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (
Gabrielle van den Berg
studied Persian language and culture at the University of Leiden and at the University of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. At present, she is Senior University Lecturer in the Cultural History of Central Asia and Iran at the Institute for Area Studies, University of Leiden. Her research focuses on the oral traditions of the Ismailis of Tajik Badakhshan and classical Persian literature. From 1998 to 2001 she was E.G. Browne lecturer in Persian at the University of Cambridge and in the following years she was affiliated to the Cambridge Shahnama Project. In 2005 she was awarded a ‘VIDI’ grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (
Christine van Ruymbeke
is Soudavar Senior Lecturer in Persian Studies at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Stuides in Cambridge (
Marjolijn van Zutphen
obtained her Ph.D. at Leiden University with her dissertation Farāmarz, the Sistāni Hero: Texts and traditions of the Farāmarznāme and the Persian epic cycle (subsequently published, Leiden, 2014). Recently, she conducted research on the Persian traditions surrounding Alexander the Great (Eskandar) as part of a project about the Afro-Asiatic Alexander Cycle supervised by Faustina Doufikar-Aerts at
Laura Weinstein
is Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Since arriving at the
Kumiko Yamamoto
received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London with a thesis on “Storytelling and Poetry: The Oral Background of Persian Epics” in 2000 (published as The oral background of Persian Epics: Storytelling and poetry, Leiden, 2003). She also studied the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami at the Culture and Representation Course, Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo (2003–2005). She taught English at the University of Tokyo (2006–2008). She then became a Corresponding Fellow at the Institute for Iranian Studies, the Georg-August University Göttingen (2009–2016). Her research work focuses on the interaction of orality and writing, with a special reference to naqqali, the Shahnama of Firdausi, and the “Longer” Barzunama. It also includes film studies with a focus on Abbas Kiarostami. Currently, she is translating poems by Abbas Kiarostami into Japanese.