Abū l-Muṭahhar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Azdī Author

Abū l-Muṭahhar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Azdī is known only as the author of this text (5th/11th century). Judging by his own introduction, he attended many literary gatherings in Baghdad, which were the inspiration for this unusual book. Emily Selove obtained her PhD from UCLA in 2012. She is a senior lecturer in Medieval Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Exeter. She is currently the PrincipaI Investigator of a Leverhulme-funded research project, "A Sorcerer's Handbook."  Geert Jan van Gelder retired as Laudian Professor of Arabic, University of Oxford, in 2012 and returned to the Netherlands in 2015. He has published widely on Classical Arabic literature.