Carl Petry (Ph.D. Michigan,1974), Hamad bin Khalifa Chair in Middle East Studies and Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, Northwestern University, specializes in the Middle East (Nile Valley: Northeast Africa through Southwest Asia: Iran) from the advent of Islam to the late medieval period (6th-16th centuries C.E.). His research addresses the cultural and social History of pre-modern Egypt and Syria. His first monograph: The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages examined that city’s administrative and scholastic communities, based on a computerized data file of 5000 persons prominent in its literary culture during the 15th century. He has subsequently analyzed the political economy of Egypt preceding the Ottoman conquest (1517), with a focus on strategies implemented by its military rulers to maintain financial solvency during endemic budget deficits. His next two monographs: Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamluk Sultans al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri in Egypt (a Choice Outstanding book, 1993), and Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a Great Power investigated this issue through a study of charitable trust deeds (waqfs) expropriated by these rulers to acquire enhanced revenues under the guise of Islamic beneficence. Petry edited and contributed to volume I of The Cambridge History of Egypt: Islamic Egypt, 640-1517, a multi-authored survey of that country from the Arab conquest to the Ottoman occupation. His current research considers crime and criminal prosecution in medieval Egypt and Syria, recently published as The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society: Narratives from Cairo and Damascus under the Mamluks. He is also studying gender relations in pre-modern Muslim societies as depicted in medieval Arabic narratives. Petry’s research has been supported by the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the American Council of Learned Societies.