Carole Hillenbrand is an eminent authority on Islam. She is currently Professor Emerita in Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh and Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews. She has previously taught at Dartmouth College, NH and Washington University in St. Louis, MO. In 2005 she was the first non-Muslim to be awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies, and in 2009 she received the Order of the British Empire in the New Year's Honors List for Services to Higher Education. She has written a number of books on the subject, including the internationally successful The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives , and has published more than sixty articles on aspects of Islamic history and thought.