Professor Ella Landau-Tasseron is a historian of medieval Islam affiliated with the department for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She acquired her Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is part of what is informally known among scholars as “the Jerusalem school of oriental studies”. She has investigated Islamic history, tradition, institutions and historiography, as well as tribal society. Among her publications is a series of articles on alliances in early Islamic tribal society, published between the years 2003-2006. She also participated in the Tabari translation project initiated by Columbia University, where she contributed the last volume of the series (published in 1998). In recent years she is working on the concept on jihad, a work begun while she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University.