Dr. Bilal Ware is a historian of Africa and Islam. He earned his Ph.D. in history in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania where he was trained in African History, African-American History, and Islamic Intellectual History. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the founder and director of the Initiative for the Study of Race, Religion, and Revolution (ISRRAR). His first book, The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, explores the history of a thousand years of Quran schooling in the region. He is the author of multiple articles on Muslim anti-slavery movements in Africa and the Atlantic World, and his most recent book, Jihad of the Pen, explores Sufi thought in West Africa.