Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin is senior research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. A prolific author with many books to his credit, he is known for works spanning Islamic history, Orientalism, and Sufi spirituality. His titles include Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents, a critical examination of Western scholarship on Islam, and Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics, and the Sixties, a personal memoir entwined with Islamic mysticism. He is also the author of Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography, a study of the great fourteenth-century Muslim historian and social thinker.