Born in Tehran, Minou Reeves was, until 1979, a career diplomat. At the time of the Iranian Revolution she was Queen Farah’s international secretary. She is the author of Behind the Peacock Throne and Female Warriors of Allah: Women and the Islamic Revolution and is now a Fellow of the Institute of Linguists, London. A College Fellow and an Arabist, the author of the preface, Dr P. J. Stewart, now lectures at the Human Sciences Honour School, Oxford, with a special interest in the ecology of religion.