In Islamic Leadership in the European Lands of the Former Ottoman and Russian Empires the development of national muftiates is presented through a double prism of the institutional structures of Muslim communities and the dimension of the spiritual guidance.

Egdūnas Račius, Ph.D. (2004), University of Helsinki, Finland, is Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. He has published several dozen articles on Muslims in Europe and the monograph Muslims in Eastern Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
Antonina Zhelyazkova, Ph.D. (1983), is Chairperson of the Board of Directors at the International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, Sofia, Bulgaria. She is Associate Professor of Urgent Anthropology and Ethnology at the Faculty of History of St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. She has published monographs and many articles on minorities in the Balkans. She is author and editor of the three-volume series on urgent anthropology Problems of Multiethnicity in the Western Balkans.