Qatar.This transnational institution, and others within Education City,
represent further islands of efficiency within rentier academia.Iamvery
grateful for the academic freedom and support provided by Qatar
Foundation.Ialso thank AllysonVanstone, Aisha al-Muftah, Byrad
Yyelland, Dina Bangdel, Leah Long, Line Christiansen, Melis Hafez,
Radha Dalal, Sadia Mir and my other colleagues and friends in Qatar for
their support. Lore Guilmartin kindly ordered numerous books for my
research for the VCUQatar Library.Special thanks go to my students for
their inspiring discussions about the history and sociology of science in
the Muslim world.
Outside of Qatar,numerous people provided me with feedback at
various stages of my research, helping to make the manuscript richer,
stronger and more accurate.Iamextremely grateful to the anonymous
peer-reviewers commissioned by I.B.Tauris for their helpful comments. I
also benefitted from the great expertise and eye for detail of my editor
Maria Marsh and her colleagues at I.B.Tauris. Before the formal peer-
review,Iwas very fortunate to receive constructive feedback from various
teachers and colleagues. Marwa Elshakry,Jonathan Ercanbrack, Mike
Farquhar,Ben Fortna, Konrad Hirschler,Martyn Smith, Melania Savino
and PhilippWirtz all read the first proposals for this project in 2012.
Husnul Amin, Jeanine Dag˘yeli, Eva-Maria Silies and Cyrus Schayegh, as
well as anonymous reviewers commissioned by Deutsche Forschungsge-
meinschaftcommentedonthesubsequent proposalsin2013.A
numberofmyfriendsandcolleagues,includingLuigiAchilli,Joa˜o
RangeldeAlmeida,Elise Burton, BirgitKrawietzandDanStolz,
kindlycommentedondifferent partsofthe manuscript.Furthermore,
Ihadtheprivilegeofdiscussingachapter with studentsandcolleagues
attheBerlinGraduateSchoolMuslimCultures andSocietiesin2013.
In thefinalstag
sofpreparingthemanuscript,anumberofbiologists
andprotagonistsofthisbookcommentedondifferentchapters.They
includeZaherAl-Sulaimani,FaysalBibi,AndreasBuerkert,Shaukat
Chaudhary,Yolanda van Heezik,Shahina Ghazanfar,Harald Ku¨rschner,
FriedhelmKrupp,Ste´phaneOstrowski,PhilSeddon,SevketSenand
JoeWilliams.Oliver Jarvisof GlobalProofreadingandCopy-editing
kindlyalignedthe manuscriptwiththeI.B.Taurishousestyleand
corrected myEnglish.
In addition, various audiences have provided me with very helpful
feedback on the presentations of my research. In 2012,Iintroduced
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii