Abbas Amanat is an Iranian-American historian born on November 14, 1947, in Iran. He attended Alborz High School and earned his B.A. from Tehran University in 1971, followed by a D.Phil. from the School of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 1981. Since 1983, he has been a faculty member at Yale University, where he served as the William Graham Sumner Professor of History and Director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies until becoming Professor Emeritus. His scholarship focuses on the history of early modern and modern Iran, Shi'ism, the Middle East, and the Persianate world, with numerous publications analyzing topics from Iranian history to American missionary activities and contemporary issues like the war on terror. Amanat is also an accomplished author and editor, contributing extensively to the field through books and academic works published over more than three decades. His career has established him as a leading authority on Iranian studies in the United States, and he has served as a Ph.D. advisor at Yale University, guiding dissertations such as Rubin's on modern Iran.