Elias MuhannaElias Muhanna is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is the author of The World in a Book: al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition and translator of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī's furteenth-century Arabic compendium The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, which was chosen as a "Best Book of 2016" by NPR and The Guardian, and editor of The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies. Read More Read Less