CONTRIBUTOR:

Martin Custers

AFFILIATION:

TITLE:

DEPARTMENT:

INSTITUTION:

Maastricht, The Netherlands

BIOGRAPHY:

Martin Custers is a retired Arabist. He studied Arabic, Turkish and Swahili at Leiden University, The Netherlands, and graduated in 1972 with two M.A. dissertations: Sulayman al-Baruni, an Ibadi Panislamist and The Imamate of Salim b. Rashid al-Kharusi, chronicle of a period in the history of Oman, 1913-1920. While working, first at Leiden University, then in several government departments, as analyst of Middle East politics and as official in Dutch minorities policy, also briefly with a firm in Saudi Arabia, and finally as teacher of Arabic in a professional university for translators, he kept up his interest in al-Ibadiyya. Immediately after his retirement he published an annotated bibliography of al-Ibadiyya.