Roy Parviz Mottahedeh was the Gurney Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He served as the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard from 1987 to 1990 and as Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard from 2006 to 2011. His first book, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, gained him a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he was among the first to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. His history of modern Iran, The Mantle of the Prophet, is an international bestseller which has been translated into numerous languages, and both this and his translation of Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence by Muhammad Baqir As-Sadr are also available from Oneworld.