Mansur al-Hallaj (Persian: منصور حلاج‎ Mansūr-e Ḥallāj; full name Abū al-Muġīṭ Husayn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāğ) (c. 858 – March 26, 922) (Hijri c. 244 AH – 309 AH) was a Persian mystic, revolutionary writer and pious teacher of Sufism most famous for his poetry, accusation of heresy and for his execution at the orders of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir after a long, drawn-out investigation.

Al-Hallaj was born around 858 in Fars province of Persia to a cotton-carder (Hallaj means "cotton-carder" in Arabic). His grandfather was a Zoroastrian. His father lived a simple life, and this form of lifestyle greatly interested the young Al-Hallaj. As a youngster he memorized the Qur'an and would often retreat from worldly pursuits to join other mystics in study.

Al-Hallaj later married and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he stayed for one year, facing the mosque, in fasting and total silence. After his stay at the city, he traveled extensively and wrote and taught along the way. He traveled as far as India and Central Asia gaining many followers, many of whom accompanied him on his second and third trips to Mecca. After this period of travel, he settled down in the Abbasid capital of Baghdad.

Dhafer Youssef (Arabic: ظافر يوسف‎; born 19 November 1967 in Teboulba, Tunisia) is a composer, singer and oud player. He developed an interest in jazz at an early age and clandestinely listened to it during his education at a Qur'anic school. He later left Tunisia to start a jazz career and has lived in Europe since 1990, usually in Paris or Vienna. He also works in avant garde and world music where he has been nominated for awards. He has released four albums of his own and also did notable work with Sardinian trumpeter Paolo Fresu and the Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset. He indicates an affinity for the music of India and Nordic music. He was a guest artist on the Norwegian jazz artist Bugge Wesseltoft's album FiLM iNG. Youssef has also performed with Uri Caine, Jon Hassell, Markus Stockhausen,Nguyên Lê and the Cuban pianist Omar Sosa. In 2001 he recorded Electric Sufi with the ex-Sugar Hill Gang and Tackhead rhythm section of Will Calhoun and Doug Wimbish.

Louis Massignon (July 25, 1883–October 31, 1962) was a French scholar of Islam and its history. Although a Catholic himself, he tried to understand Islam from within and thus had a great influence on the way Islam was seen in the West; among other things, he paved the way for a greater openness inside the Catholic Church towards Islam as it was documented in the pastoral Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate.

Louis Massignon was born in Nogent-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne near Paris. His father, Fernand Massignon (1855–1922), a painter and a sculptor under the pseudonym Pierre Roche, was an intimate friend of Joris-Karl Huysmans. Huysmans' own conversion to Roman Catholicism was one of the first major inspirations of the young Louis in a friendly tutorial relationship that lasted from 1901 till Huysmans' death in 1907.

Louis Massignon started his studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris (1896) where he befriended his classmate Henri Maspero, later a renowned sinologist. Following his "baccalauréat" (1901) he went on a first trip to Algeria where his family had relations, and ties with high colonial officers: Henry de Vialar, Henry de Castries and Alfred Le Chatelier, the founder of the Chair of Muslim Sociology at the Collège de France in Paris. In 1902 he continued his studies, graduating "licencié ès-lettres" on an essay on Honoré d'Urfé and embarking on the first of his many Arab subjects: the corporations of Fez in the 15th century. Exploring the sources of his study in Morocco in 1904 he vowed to dedicate himself to the study of Arabic after a dangerous confrontation in the desert. In 1906 he received his "diplome d'études supèrieures" on the strength of his study Tableau géographique du Maroc dans les 15 prémieres années du 16ième siecle, d'après Leon l'Africain (Jourdan ed., Alger 1906).

Annemarie Schimmel, SI, HI, (April 7, 1922 – January 26, 2003) was a well known and very influential German Orientalist and scholar, who wrote extensively on Islam and Sufism. She was a professor at Harvard University from 1967 to 1992.

Schimmel was born to Protestant and highly cultured middle-class parents in Erfurt, Germany. Her father, Paul, was a postal worker and her mother, Anna belonged to a family with connections to seafaring and international trade. Schimmel remembered her father as "a wonderful playmate full of fun", her mother made her feel she was the child of her dreams and her home as full of poetry and literature, though her family was not an academic one.

She began studying at the University of Berlin in 1939 at the age of 17, during the period of Nazi Germany. She received a doctorate in Islamic languages and civilization at the age of 19. Following this, she was drafted by the German Foreign Office while continuing with her scholarly work in her free time. At the age of 23, she became a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Marburg, Germany in 1946, where she earned a second doctorate in the history of religions in 1954.

Mustafa al-Hallaj (1938-17 December 2002) (Arabic: مصطفى الحلاج‎) was born in Salama in the Jaffa region of Palestine (modern-day Israel.)

Al-Hallaj was a pioneer in the Arab art world, known as an "icon of contemporary Arab graphic arts." His work was often devoted to his lost homeland, Palestine, and he is also said to have tried to turn Palestine into the form and content of his artistic school.

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, al-Hallaj and his family ended up in Damascus where he completed his higher education in 1964. He studied sculpture at the College of Fine Arts in Cairo and attended the Luxor Atelier for Postgraduate Studies. His art included paintings, graphics, murals, illustrations, cover designs and etchings, with specializations in graphic art and sculpture. He lived in Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria.

Hallaj contributed to defining the fan al-muqawama (or, "the art of resistance"). He lost 25,000 of his prints in Israeli attacks on Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon war but managed to save the wood and masonry cuts he used to make them.