Acknowledgments

Authors of scholarly books often feel obliged to produce an extended list of individuals to whom they owe a considerable intellectual debt. Although this broad-ranging book engages generations of scholarship, including conversations with numerous colleagues past and present, I have chosen, with some reluctance, to forego formulating such a list as it would have been exceedingly long, and paring it would have been a disservice to unmentioned friends and associates. That said, I must confess I could not have written the chapter on Islamic philosophy and science without the help of David Reisman, even though we agreed to disagree on questions of medieval patronage. In the same fashion, informed readers will recognize my great debt to Sidney Griffith in the chapter on Christian-Muslim polemics. Last but not least, I am compelled to call attention to those individuals who in one way or another profoundly shaped my embrace of Near Eastern history: my Doktorvater Franz Rosenthal, S. D. Goitein, David Ayalon, Bernard Lewis, and M. J. Kister, all of whom served as models of scholarly integrity. I feel exceedingly humbled by the immense shadow cast by these prodigiously learned individuals and ever so grateful to have been the recipient of their intellectual generosity. Although all of these mentors save one are now conducting their seminars in the celestial academy, I still feel their immediate presence, and as with the last of the group, I find myself constantly measuring my words against what I imagine to be their high expectations.

With all due respect to rabbotei and morei, I can truthfully say no single person has had a more profound influence on my writing than my most objective reader and critic, my wife Phyllis, a distinguished scholar in her own right, who has always managed to make my projects a lengthier process than I thought necessary. She has an uncanny knack of asking the most penetrating questions and filtering my historical interests and insights through her searching literary lens. I eagerly anticipate the day when my grandchildren, aged ten, eight, and five, will discover that their “Zeide” is not necessarily the font of all wisdom, and will in turn expand the ranks of the family critics and advisors.