Farhad Daftary received his PhD in 1971 from the University of California, Berkeley. He has held different teaching positions and, since 1998, he has been affiliated with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, where he was Director and Head of the Department of Academic Research and Publications until 2022. Since 2023, Daftary has been the Institute’s Director Emeritus and a member of its Board of Governors. As well as serving on various editorial and advisory boards, he has been the Editor-in-Chief (with the late W. Madelung) of Encyclopaedia Islamica. An authority in Ismaili studies and broader Shiʿi studies, Daftary has written and edited some 30 books, including The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (1990, 2nd ed., 2007), The Assassin Legends (1994), A Short History of the Ismailis (1998), Ismaili Literature (2004), Historical Dictionary of the Ismailis (2012, 2nd ed., 2025), A History of Shi’i Islam (2013), The Ismaili Imams (2020), Ismaili Sources, Studies, History and Tradition (2025), and more than 350 articles, book chapters and encyclopaedia entries. Daftary’s books have been translated into Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Gujarati and numerous European languages.