Brinkley MessickBrinkley Messick (PhD, Anthropology, Princeton) is Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of The Calligraphic State (Californa, 1993), which won the Albert Hourani Award from the Middle East Studies Association, and Sharīʿa Scripts: An Historical Anthropology (Columbia, forthcoming) and the coeditor of Islamic Legal Interpretation (Harvard, 1996). Read More Read Less