Eric Ormsby is Professor and Senior Research Associate at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. He was previously Director of Libraries at McGill University in Montreal, and Professor, and later Director, of McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies, from 1986 until 2005. He is the author of several books, most recently Ghazali: The Revival of Islam (Oxford, 2007), and many articles on Islamic philosophy, theology, and mysticism. From 1975 to 1983, he served as Curator of Islamic Manuscripts at Princeton University and co-authored (with Rudolf Mach) the Handlist of Arabic Manuscripts (New Series) in the Princeton University Library (Princeton, 1987). He is also a frequent contributor of essays and reviews on literature, history, and philosophy, as well as Islamic thought, to such publications as The New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New Criterion, among others.