William A. Graham is Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and O’Brian Professor and Dean, Faculty of Divinity, Harvard University. He has held Guggenheim and von Humboldt fellowships and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his writings are Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam (1977-ACLS History of Religions Prize), Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (1987), and Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies (2010).