Gregor Schoeler has been the chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Basel since 1982. His recent publications include Al-Ma’arrî: Paradies und Hölle, Munich, 2002 (German translation of the first part of al-Ma’arrî’s Risâlat al-Ghufrân), and Volume 4 of the Dîwân of Abû Nuwâs, Beirut 2003, and The Oral and the Written in Early Islam, London and New York 2006, and The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, Edinburgh 2009.