Acknowledgments
The two editors of this book would like to thank warmly Francesca Chubb-Confer, PhD student at the University of Chicago, for her invaluable editorial work. Francesca has not only read cautiously each contribution but also revised the English language of non-native English-speaking authors. Many thanks also to Eduardo Acosta, PhD student at the University of Chicago, for his work on the indexes of the present volume. Several institutions generously sponsored our project: The Franke Institute for the Humanities; the Committee on Southern Asian Studies (COSAS) and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), both at the University of Chicago; the Chicago University Paris Center; the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society; the Centre dâÃtudes sur la Turquie, lâEmpire Ottoman, les Balkans et lâAsie Centrale (CETOBAC, Paris) and the Mondes Iranien et Indien, both Departments of the French National Centre for Scientific research (CNRS); the Ãcole des Hautes Ãtudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris); the Collège de France. To all, we offer our thanks. We are grateful to Kathy van Vliet (Brill Publishers) and Nathalie Clayer (CETOBAC) for their constant support throughout the publication process. Lastly, our gratitude goes to the chairs of the three conferences that we organized during the project and to our patient yet enthusiastic contributors.