Rula Jurdi Abisaab is a professor of Islamic history at McGill University. She focuses on Shi`a legal-juristic transformations in Safavid Iran and Ottoman Syria. Her works also cover Marxist and Islamist thought in Lebanon and Iraq. Her essays on Arabic fiction complement her poetic and literary output. She authored Converting Persia and numerous articles, chapters, and encyclopedic entries. She co-authored with Malek Abisaab The Shiʿites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah’s Islamists. Her new monograph explores the canonization of traditions and the silence of the law in 17th-century Iran. She received lately the Khayrallah Prize for her Arabic novel One Hundred Flutters. She is co-founder of Mïtra, revue d'art et de littérature.