Matti Moosa, a native of Mosul, Iraq, and an American citizen since 1965, held a Law degree from Baghdad Law School, Iraq, a United Nations Diploma of Merit from the University of Wales in Swansea, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Middle Eastern history and culture from Columbia University in New York City. His publications include The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction, 1983, 2nd ed., (1997) The Maronites in History (1986), translated into Arabic under the title Al-Mawarina fi al-Tarikh (Damascus, 2004), Extremist Shiites: the Ghulat Sects (1988); The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz: Images of Modern Egypt (1994); The Crusades: Conflict between Christendom and Islam (2008) and many other translated books. He has also contributed numerous articles on Middle Eastern history and culture to leading periodicals. Dr Moosa passed away in 2014.