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Since 1988, Professor of Islamic Thought at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago; since 1997 The Avalon Foundation Distinguished Service Professor at the same university. She is Associate editor of the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, and co-editor for the series Islamic History and Civilization at the publishing house E. J. Brill, in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon. Studied at the American University of Beirut, with part of the doctoral work done in the University of Tuebingen, Germany. BA, MA and Ph.D. in Arabic literature and Islamic Studies. Taught at the American University of Beirut (1973-1985) at Harvard (1976-77), Columbia (1985-86), Yale (1986-88).

Publications: ten books (including a number of editions of Arabic classical texts from manuscripts) and over 50 articles in various areas of Islamic thought and classical Arabic prose, mainly in the first four centuries of Islam (7th-10th centuries CE). Special areas of interest and research: the Qur'an's influence on Arabic prose, Islamic political thought, early Islamic theology and sectarianism, early Islamic administrative history, and Islamic papyrology.