Faces of the Infinite

Stefan Sperl, a graduate of Oxford (Arabic) and SOAS (PhD 1977), and former staff member of UNHCR (1978-88), is now Emeritus Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS. His publications include articles on Arabic, Islamic and Refugee Studies, as well as Mannerism in Arabic Poetry: A Structural Analysis of Selected Texts (1989), Qasida Poetry in Islamic Africa and Asia (with Christopher Shackle, 1996) and The CosmicScript: SacredGeometry and the Science of Arabic Penmanship (with Ahmed Moustafa, 2014), which won the Iran Book of the Year Award (2016). His most recent publication is 'The Qur'an and Arabic Poetry' (The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies, 2020).Yorgos Dedes's teaching includes courses on Ottoman and Modern Turkish language, literature and culture. Since 2005 he has also been teaching at the Intensive Ottoman and Turkish Summer School in Cunda, Turkey. His research interests focus on Ottoman literature and Turkish culture with special reference to frontier epic traditions and relations with Byzantium and Greece. Another area of interest is the aljamiado literature of the Greek-speaking Muslims of the Ottoman empire.  Recent publications include a book chapter on Bursa in Europe: A Literary History, edited by David Wallace (CUP 2015), an edition of the Greek aljamiado translation of Süleymân Çelebî's Mevlid-i nebî (Journal of Turkish Studies, 2013) and an article on Ottoman poetry with Stefan Sperl ('In the rose-bower every leaf is a page of delicate meaning': An Arabic perspective on threeOttoman kasides, in Eski Edebiyat Çalismalari VIII, Istanbul 2013).