¿Ali Akbar Khatayi was a Persian merchant from Central Eurasia who spent six years in China. He later traveled to Istanbul, where he completed the Khataynameh (Book of China) in 1516.

Kaveh Hemmat is associate professor of history at Benedictine University. He is the translator of The Kushnameh: The Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked (2022).

John Curry is professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is a translator of Katib Çelebi's An Ottoman Cosmography: Translation of Cihannüma (2021) and a number of other books.

Hyunhee Park is professor of history at the City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her books include Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia (2012).

Lanshin Chang is retired from the University of Macau. She has translated books by Robert Antony into Chinese.

Fan Rong is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn. She is the author of "The Timurid Regions and Moghulistan Through the Eyes of a Ming Diplomat: An Annotated Translation of the Xiyu fanguo zhi and Selected Poems by Chen Cheng (1415)."