I would like to extend my thanks to the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, the Sub-Faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek at the University of Oxford, and the British Comparative Literature Association, for providing the generous grants that have made this publication possible. This project started life as a doctoral thesis and as such owes the greatest of debts to my principal PhD supervisor, Professor Michael Worton, of University College London, for his constant support and unstinting intellectual involvement. I have benefited a great deal from our collaboration, but most of all, I have learnt not to be afraid to turn my enthusiasm into concrete arguments. Professor Dimitris Tziovas, of the University of Birmingham, also provided invaluable input in his capacity as external supervisor — and offered me a friendship that has survived well beyond this project. Over the years, I have benefited from illuminating discussions with Annette Lavers and Jane Cowan (my doctoral examiners), Alexis Politis, Ere Stavropoulou, Christopher Robinson, Dionysis Savvopoulos, Roderick Beaton, Eleni Politou-Marmarinou, Angela Kastrinake, Anna Stamatopoulou, Giannis Petridis, the late Tasos Falireas, Gail Holst, Constanze Güthenke, Peter Mackridge, Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys, Kyra Paraschaki and Elias Kyvelos, as well as my students at UCL and Oxford. Initial research for this project was funded by a grant in Comparative Literature from IKY, the Greek State Scholarship Foundation, and completed with the help of small grants from the A.G. Leventis Foundation and the Friends Programme, UCL. Travel grants at various stages were provided by the Phylis Palmer Travel Fund, UCL Graduate School, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at Oxford. An Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in the Humanities (UCL) allowed me to rethink the focus of this book, but also gave me the necessary freedom to pursue other projects while taking some distance from this one. This was also a characteristic of the first year of my appointment as University Lecturer in the Faculty of Modern Languages at Oxford. I am grateful to numerous colleagues and friends at both Oxford and UCL for their support. At Legenda, my manuscript benefited immensely from editorial яomments and suggestions offered by Professor Peter France and the anonymous reader, as well as from Polly Fallows’s careful editing and Graham Nelson’s precision, goodwill and patience. I should also like to thank Martin McLaughlin and Stephen Parkinson for their advice. I have always linked my experience of Savvopoulos’s music to Alexis Kyritsopoulos’s marvellous paintings and sketches. Thus, I feel extremely honoured to be able to reproduce one of them on the cover of this book. The sketch, comprising different versions of a songwriter dancing in a neverending sequence, encompasses all I tried to say with the notion of the singing poet. I am grateful to the artist for permission to reprint. My mother Konstantina Nanou and my sister Eleni Syminelaki-Nanou have always been there, my most consistent points of reference. Finally, this book is the fruit, in more than one ways, of my life with William McEvoy. It feels as if I owe him every single word here — and much much more.

I am very grateful to the Centers for Near Eastern Studies and European and Euroasian Studies of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and their directors Leonard Binder and Ivan T. Berend, respectively. The funding provided by the two centers madeit possible for me to lead a seminar at UCLA on Muslim/Middle Eastern diasporas in Europe and North America during the spring of 2004. My regular presence at UCLA has enabled me to spend the necessary time in the library system there and to improve many of the entries in this dictionary. I am also grateful to the Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State University (SDSU); its chair Linda Holler; and faculty and staff members for providing me with their ongoing support and a friendly academic atmosphere. Many colleagues and friends have contributed to making this book possible. I am most grateful for the articles, books, citations, support, and advice provided during the past several years by Jere Bacharach, Irene A. Bierman, Anwar Dabbour, Dany Doueiri, Jonathan Friedlander, Alice and Jerry Gess, Iskandar Mansour, Isma‘il Poonawala, Georges Sabagh, Yona Sabar, Fouad Sleem, Irving Alan Sparks, and Hossein Ziai. Many other unnamed individuals have provided me with access to their library collections and rich insights. Special thanks are also due to Heidi Rutz, Hussam Timani, and Nabil Zeitoun; whenever these three invaluable friends came across an article or a book that could be of use for this dictionary or for my work on the Druzes in general, they enthusiastically informed me of their find. David Hirsch of the Charles Young Research Library at UCLA was most helpful in promptly providing the requested citations and alerting me to what and where additional material could be located. Appreciation is also due to J. Chase Langford of the UCLA Department of Geography for producing the maps. The dedicated assistance in data entry and other research tasks of Anika Farber during the summer of 2003 is most appreciated. I would also like to thank Elisa Quinn Hedrick for her diligent attention to detail in entering the changes made on the first draft, for editing the subsequent revisions, and for her overall patience and assistance in handling research tasks and text inconsistencies. Her dedication and interest in the different aspects of this project have indeed contributed greatly to its completion. Jon Woronoff, the editor of the Historical Dictionaries of People and Cultures series, is most appreciated for his thoughtful suggestions and insightful recommendations. Without his superb patience and professionalism, this book would have not been possible. Finally, it goes without saying, however, that I remain responsible for all shortcomings in this work. I am also responsible for excluding potentially important entries that lacked or that were still awaiting verification at the time the manuscript was completed.