An innovative volume that examines the sources and types of religious authority throughout history and across Islamic and Judaic cultures

Daphna Ephrat is associate professor of Islamic history in the Department of History, Philosophy, and Jewish Studies at the Open University of Israel. She is the author of A Learned Society in a Period of Transition and Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety, and coauthor of the Israeli Open University series Introduction to Islam.
Meir Hatina is associate professor in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and director of the Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of 'Ulama', Politics and the Public Sphere (The University of Utah Press, 2010), editor of Guardians of Faith in Modern Times, and coeditor of The Muslim Brethern: A Religious Vision in a Changing Reality.