Amer Habibullah is an assistant professor of history and theories of landscape architecture at King Abdulaziz University, where he directs the graduate program in the Department of Landscape Architecture. He is the cofounder and current president of the Saudi Society of Landscape Architecture and the chairman of education and academic affairs at the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA)—Middle East.

D. Fairchild Ruggles holds the Presidential Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she directs the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and teaches in the Department of Landscape Architecture and School of Architecture. She serves as the art and architecture field editor for the Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill) and is the author of Gardens, Landscape and Vision in the Palace of Islamic Spain (2000) and Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (2008), as well as numerous authored and edited volumes on Islamic architecture, cultural heritage, the arts patronage of women in Islam, and environmental history.