Josef van Ess (1934-2021) was Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies and Semitic Languages, University of Tübingen, Germany. He published widely on the History of the Islamic World; Islamic theology and philosophy, especially with respect to the formative period (8th-10th centuries) and the age of the Mongol conquests (13th-14th centuries); and Islamic mysticism. His most famous work and is Theologie und Gesellschaft in 6 volumes (de Gruyter 1991-97), the English translation of which is being published by Brill.

Joep Lameer (Ph.D. Leiden, 1992) specialises in Islamic philosophy and logic. Proficient in Persian and Arabic, he has a passion for philology and codicology, publishing books and scholarly articles, some of them jointly with young and upcoming scholars from Iran. A resident of Tehran for several years, he was awarded the Iranian Book of the Year Prize in 2010 for a study on the epistemology of Mullā Ṣadrā (17th cent.). Doing much to promote Iranian scholarship outside Iran, he was actively involved in Brill’s publication of the Miras Maktoob Persian e-book Collection some years ago.