Richard L Tapper received his MA from the University of Cambridge and his PhD from the University of London. He is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology with reference to the Middle East in the University of London and taught at SOAS from 1967 to 2004. His main research interests are: Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, pastoral nomadism, ethnicity, tribe/state relations, anthropology of Islam, anthropology of the state, documentary film, Iranian cinema. His publications include: Pasture and Politics: Economics, Conflict and Ritual among Shahsevan Nomads of Northwestern Iran (1979); Frontier Nomads of Iran: A Political and Social History of the Shahsevan (1997); with Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform (forthcoming 2006); ed. The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (1983); ed. Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics and Literature in a Secular State (1991); ed. Some Minorities in the Middle East (1992); ed. with Sami Zubaida, Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (1994, revised as A Taste of Thyme 2000); ed. Ayatollah Khomeini and the Modernization of Islamic Thought (2000); ed. The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity (2002); ed. with Jon Thompson, The Nomadic Peoples of Iran (2002); ed. with Keith McLachlan, Technology, Tradition and Survival: Aspects of Material Culture in the Middle East and Central Asia (2003).