Tayeb El-Hibri, Associate Professor of Arabic and Near Eastern Studies, (Ph.D. in Islamic History, Columbia University, 1994; A.B. in History, Stanford University, 1986). His research interests include classical Arabic historiography, and medieval and modern Arabic literature. He has been a visiting lecturer at Yale (1993-94), and has taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, since 1994, where he is now director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program. His publications include Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate (Cambridge University Press, 1999), which received the Albert Hourani Award Honorable Mention of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 2000, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs (Columbia University Press, 2010), and various articles in journals, including: Arabica, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Near Eastern Studies and Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, along with the chapter “The Empire in Iraq, 763-861” in The New Cambridge History of Islam (2008). He has also been consultant on Arabic and Islamic history for the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the exhibition, “al-Andalus: The Arts of Islamic Spain (711-1492).”