Carl F. Petry is the Hamad Ibn Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Middle East Studies and Professor of HIstory at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (1982), Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri in Egypt (1993), Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt's Waning as a Great Power (1994), The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society: Narratives from Cairo and Damascus under the Mamluks (2012) and is the Editor of The Cambridge History of Egypt: Islamic Egypt, 640-1517 (1998). His research has been supported by the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the American Council of Learned Societies.