Fred Donner is Professor of Near Eastern History in the Oriental Institute and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is also currently Director of the University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. His scholarly work focuses on early Islam, Islamic historiography, and medieval Islamic social history. He received his B.A. (1968) and Ph.D. (1975) degrees from Princeton University, and also studied in Lebanon and at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität in Erlangen, Germany.