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British scholar of Middle East Studies (1905?1969)
Arthur John Arberry
(12 May 1905, in
Portsmouth
? 2 October 1969, in
Cambridge
)
FBA
was a British scholar of
Arabic literature
,
Persian studies
, and
Islamic studies
. He was educated at
Portsmouth Grammar School
and
Pembroke College, Cambridge
. His English translation of the
Qur'an
,
The Koran Interpreted
, is popular amongst academics worldwide.
[1]
[2]
Academic career
[
edit
]
Arberry served as Head of the Department of Classics at
Cairo University
in
Egypt
. He eventually returned home to become the Assistant Librarian at the Library of the
India Office
. During the Second World War he was a Postal Censor in Liverpool
[
citation needed
]
and was then seconded to the
Ministry of Information
, which was housed in the newly constructed
Senate House
of the
University of London
. Arberry held the Chair of Persian at the School of Oriental and African Studies
SOAS
, University of London, in 1944?47. He subsequently became the
Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic
at
Cambridge University
and a Fellow of
Pembroke College, Cambridge
, his alma mater, from 1947 until his death in 1969. He is buried in
Ascension Parish
, Cambridge, together with his wife Sarina Simons Arberry (1900-1973). She was Romanian by birth; Arberry first met her in Cairo and they married at Cambridge in 1932.
[3]
[4]
Arberry is also notable for introducing
Rumi
's works to the west through his selective translations and for translating the important anthology of medieval Andalusian Arabic poetry
The Pennants of the Champions and the Standards of the Distinguished
. His interpretation of
Muhammad Iqbal
's writings, edited by
Badiozzaman Forouzanfar
, is similarly distinguished.
Arberry also introduced to an English-speaking audience the work of Malta's national poet,
Carmelo Psaila
, popularly known as Dun Karm,
[5]
in the bilingual anthology
Dun Karm, Poet of Malta
.
Works
[
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]
- The Rubai'yat of Jalal Al-Din
Rumi
: Select Translations Into English Verse
(Emery Walker, London, 1949)
- The Rubai'yat of Omar Khayyam
. Edited from a Newly Discovered Manuscript Dated 658 (1259?60) in the Possession of A. Chester Beatty Esq.
(Emery Walker, London, 1949) ? unbeknown to Arberry or
Alfred Chester Beatty
, the "newly discovered manuscript" was a twentieth-century forgery.
[6]
- Avicenna on Theology
(London: John Murray, 1951)
- Omar Khayyam. A New Version, Based upon Recent Discoveries
(London: John Murray, 1952) ? based upon the Beatty and another forged manuscript
[6]
- The Secrets of Selflessness
(John Murray, London, 1953)
- Moorish Poetry: A Translation of 'The Pennants', an Anthology Compiled in 1243 by the Andalusian Ibn Sa'id
(University Press, Cambridge, 1953),
- The Koran Interpreted
(Allen & Unwin, London, 1955)
- The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature
(Allen & Unwin, London, 1955)
- Classical Persian Literature
(1958)
- Dun Karm, poet of Malta
. Texts chosen and translated by A.J. Arberry; introduction, notes and glossary by P. Grech. Cambridge University Press 1961.
- Muslim Saints and Mystics, A translation of episodes from the '
Tazkirat al-Awliya
’ (Memorial of the Saints)
originally written by Farid al-Din Attar (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966)
- Javid Nama
(Allen & Unwin, London, 1966)
- Poems of Al-Mutanabbi
(University Press, Cambridge, 1967)
- Discourses of Rumi
, A translation of
Fihi Ma Fihi
, (Samuel Weiser, New York, 1972)
- Mystical Poems of Rumi
, Translated by A. J. Arberry, (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
References
[
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]
External links
[
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]
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