Ismail Kurban Husein Poonawala (born January 7, 1937) [1] is an Indian professor of Arabic at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) of over 30 years. Poonawala was born in 1937 in Godhra, India. He is a specialist in Ismaili studies. Professor Poonawala's formal education includes M.A.s from University of Mumbai and Cairo along with a Ph.D. from UCLA. [2]
John Louis Esposito is an American academic, professor of Middle Eastern and religious studies, and scholar of Islamic studies, who serves as Professor of Religion, International Affairs, and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He is also the founding director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding at Georgetown.
Peter Nielsen Ladefoged was a British linguist and phonetician. He was Professor of Phonetics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught from 1962 to 1991. His book A Course in Phonetics is a common introductory text in phonetics, and The Sounds of the World's Languages is widely regarded as a standard phonetics reference. Ladefoged also wrote several books on the phonetics of African languages. Prior to UCLA, he was a lecturer at the universities of Edinburgh, Scotland and Ibadan, Nigeria (1959–60).
Robert Hetzron, born Herzog, was a Hungarian-born linguist known for his work on the comparative study of Afro-Asiatic languages, as well as for his study of Cushitic and Ethiopian Semitic languages.
Toshihiko Izutsu was a Japanese scholar who specialized in Islamic studies and comparative religion. He took an interest in linguistics at a young age, and came to know more than thirty languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali, Hindustani, Russian, Greek, and Chinese. He is widely known for his translation of the Qurʾān into Japanese.
Thābit ibn Qays ibn Shammās al-Ḥārithī al-Khazrajī was a companion of Muhammad, who served as one of his orators and scribes, and a leader of the Ansar, the natives of Medina who gave Muhammad safe haven in their city and were among the earliest converts to Islam.
Khaled Abou el Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he has taught courses on International Human Rights, Islamic jurisprudence, National Security Law, Law and Terrorism, Islam and Human Rights, Political Asylum, and Political Crimes and Legal Systems. He is also the founder of the Usuli Institute, a non-profit public charity dedicated to research and education to promote humanistic interpretations of Islam, as well as the Chair of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has lectured on and taught Islamic law in the United States and Europe in academic and non-academic environments since approximately 1990.
Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studies and Asian studies. Traditional Oriental studies in Europe is today generally focused on the discipline of Islamic studies; the study of China, especially traditional China, is often called Sinology. The study of East Asia in general, especially in the United States, is often called East Asian studies.
Iranian studies, also referred to as Iranology and Iranistics, is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the research and study of the civilization, history, literature, art and culture of Iranian peoples. It is a part of the wider field of Oriental studies.
Uthman ibn Abi al-As al-Thaqafi was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad from the tribe of Banu Thaqif and the governor of Bahrayn and Oman in 636–650, during the reigns of caliphs Umar and Uthman. During his governorship he led military campaigns against the Sasanian Persians in Fars. After his dismissal, he settled with his brothers in Basra where he was granted a large estate by the caliph. He transmitted numerous hadiths to the scholar al-Hasan al-Basri and died in the city.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum was an Austrian historian and Arabist.
Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥayyūn al-Tamīmiyy (Arabic: النعمان بن محمد بن منصور بن أحمد بن حيون التميمي, generally known as al-Qāḍī al-Nu‘mān or as ibn Ḥayyūn was an Isma'ili jurist and the official historian of the Fatimid Caliphate. He was also called Qāḍī al-Quḍāt "Jurist of the Jurists" and Dāʻī al-Duʻāt "Missionary of Missionaries".
Daniel Carl Peterson is a former professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University (BYU).
William M. Schniedewind holds the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies and is a Professor of Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic Languages at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Stanford Jay Shaw was an American historian, best known for his works on the late Ottoman Empire, Turkish Jews, and the early Turkish Republic. Shaw's works have been criticized for their lack of factual accuracy as well as denial of the Armenian genocide, and other pro-Turkish bias.
Hossein Modarressi Tabataba'i is a leading Muslim jurist and professor of law.
Armenian studies or Armenology is a field of humanities covering Armenian history, language and culture. The emergence of modern Armenian studies is associated with the foundation of the Catholic Mechitarist order in the early 18th century. Until the early 20th century, Armenian studies were largely conducted by individual scholars in the Armenian communities of the Russian Empire, Europe, Constantinople and Vagharshapat in Armenia. After the establishment of Soviet rule, Armenian studies, and sciences in general, were institutionalized in Armenia and put under direct control of the Academy of Sciences. Today, numerous research centers in many parts of the world specialize in Armenian studies.
Michael Gregory Morony has been a professor of history at UCLA since 1974, with interests in the history of Ancient and Islamic Near East.
Kathlyn M. (Kara) Cooney is an Egyptologist, archaeologist, professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Language and Cultures at UCLA. As well as for her scholarly work, she is known for hosting television shows on ancient Egypt on the Discovery Channel as well as for writing a popular-press book on the subject. She specialises in craft production, coffin studies, and economies in the ancient world.
Giorgio Buccellati is an Italian archaeologist, best known for having discovered the ancient city of Urkesh, capital of the Hurrians, in Syria.
Attāb ibn Asid was a member of the Banu Umayya clan of the Quraysh tribe. He was appointed as the governor of the city of Mecca, in the wake of its conquest, by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the January of 630, at a young age.