Wolfgang HolzwarthWolfgang Holzwarth, born in 1952, is a senior scholar in Social Anthropology and Iranian Studies based at the Oriental Institute of the University of Halle and associated with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle. He has been a resarch associate of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Chair of Iranian Studies, University of Bamberg, and a lecturer at the School of Central Asian Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin. His publications focus on the history, society and culture of Central Asia and northern South Asia from the early modern period. He is currently researching the history and culture of southern Tajikistan since the late nineteenth century. Kurt Franz, born in 1966, teaches Islamic Studies and works on the political and social history and the history of science of the Islamic Near East from 600 to 1600. His particular interest is in popular insurgency movements, slavery, nomadism and the spatial aspects of historical processes. Following studies in Islam and Arabic, sociology, political science and history in Gottingen, he received his PhD from Hamburg University. He was a member of the Collaborative Research Centre 586, Halle University, and has held a Research Associate position at the Orient-Institut Beirut and a visiting professorship in Hamburg. Since 2015, he has been Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Tubingen and has been concentrating on the historical geography and cartography of the Islamic lands in the field of Digital Humanities. Read More Read Less