Carole Hillenbrand is Honorary Professorial Fellow, Professor Emerita at the University of Edinburgh and Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews since 2013. In 2005 she became the first non-Muslim scholar to be awarded the prestigious King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies, reflecting her 'revolutionary approach to the largely one-sided subject of the Crusades'. She is author of The Crusades (EUP, 1999), The Waning of the Umayyad Caliphate (Albany, 1989), A Muslim Principality in Crusader Times (Brill, 1990), and co-editor (with C. E. Bosworth) of Qajar Iran, (Edinburgh, 1984) and editor of The Sultan's Turret (Brill, 1999).
"These autobiographical elements, never before published, amplify the range and importance of Watt's contributions. His staggering honesty about theological/metaphysical queries reminds one of Arberry, but unlike Arberry, who found in Islam and especially Sufism a kind of surrogate faith, Watt seemed to relish being both an Anglican priest and a forthright, monumental scholar on Islam.-- ""Professor Bruce B Lawrence, Duke University"""