Acknowledgements
This book was many years in the making and has benefited from the knowledge, insight, and generous assistance of numerous teachers, colleagues, and friends. They include Rodrigo Adem, Joel Blecher, Joe Bradford, Fred Donner, Sefure Davutoglu, Mathew Ingalls, Emin Lelic, Scott Lucas, Hamza Maqbul, Jawad Qureshi, Shaykh Usāma al-Sayyid, Sabine Schmidtke, Ahmed El Shamsy, and Devin Stewart. Many colleagues and friends also took the time to read and provide input on drafts of the manuscript or parts of it. They include Sean Anthony, Jonathan Brown, Mohammad Gharaibeh, Konrad Hirschler, Christopher Melchert, and Mariam Sheibani. My partner Ranā bt. Muḥmmad Saʿīd b. Muḥmmad ʿĀrif al-Mīqātī is always my first reader and carefully reviewed and corrected multiple drafts of this book. I am forever indebted to her for the many hours she spent helping me make this a better book. I am grateful to Teddi Dolls of Brill for her patience with me as I repeatedly delayed the submission of this book.
The research for this book took me to numerous libraries, archives, and centers of research. I am grateful to the staff of the al-Azhar library, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, the Sulaymāniyya, the Topkapi Palace Library, Staatsbibliothek Zu Berlin, Leiden University Library, Yale’s Beinecke, Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ in Lucknow, the Royal Ḥasanī Library in Rabat, the National Library of Israel, the Khālidiyya in Jerusalem, and the American University in Beirut. Gabriel Swift of the Princeton University library’s Rare Books and Special Collections deserves special thanks for his help in expediting my research when I was a fellow there. My friend Yūsuf al-Uzbakī, director of the Masjid al-Aqsa library, very generously welcomed me there and has continued to answer questions related to the manuscripts of Jerusalem and beyond. I am grateful to Ḥamza al-Kattānī in Rabat, Bilāl al-Shāwīsh in Beirut, and Nūr al-Ḥasan Rashīd in Kandala, India for giving me access to manuscripts in their rich private libraries. I am indebted to my friend Abū Yaʿqūb ʿAbd al-ʿĀtī al-Sharqāwī of the ILM Institute in Cairo for providing me digital reproductions from his massive collection of digitized manuscripts, and for fielding my many manuscript related questions.
Finally, I must mention and thank my family, without their love and support, this book would not have been possible. I extend my sincerest gratitude and affection to my wife Rana, our children Leith and Karima, my parents, Donna, Howard, and Leslie, my brother Jake, my cousins Monica, Jarred, Marissa and Tyler, and Uncle Jeff, Aunt Joanne and Aunt Jane.