Suraiya Faroqhi has been a professor at the Ludwig Maximilians Universitat in Munich, Germany since 1988. She is the author of 'Pilgrims and Sultans, The Haj under the Ottomans' (IB Tauris, 1994) and 'Subjects of the Sultans, Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire' (IB Tauris, 2000) Randi Deguilhem is a Permanent Senior Researcher (CR1 habilitee) with the CNRS, IREMAM-MMSH, Aix-en-Provence. She has published on a variety of topics, with a particular interest on the pious foundations in modern and contemporary Syria, the intellectual life and educational systems in late Ottoman Damascus and on the French Secular Mission in Mandate Syria.