Christopher Melchert is an American professor and scholar of Islam, specialising in Islamic movements and institutions, especially during the ninth and tenth centuries. A prolific author, he is professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Oxford's Oriental Institute, and is a Fellow in Arabic at Pembroke College, Oxford. Having written about whether women can be prayer leaders according to the early Sunni and Shii jurists, he is one of the few expert historians who has written authoritatively on the question.