Arthur Jeffery (18 October 1892 in Melbourne,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
– 2 August 1959 in South Milford,
Canada) was a Protestant Australian
professor of
Semitic languages from 1921 at the
School of Oriental Studies in Cairo
The American University in Cairo (AUC; ar, الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة, Al-Jāmi‘a al-’Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira) is a private research university in Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning programs ...
, and from 1938 until his death jointly at
Columbia University and
Union Theological Seminary in
New York City. Jeffery was awarded a D.Litt. from Edinburgh University in 1938. He is the author of extensive historical studies of
Middle Eastern manuscripts.
His important works include ''Materials for the History of the Text of the
Qur'an: The Old Codices'', which catalogs all surviving documented variants of the orthodox Quran text; and ''The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an'', which traces the origins of 318 foreign (non-
Arabic) words found in the Qur'an.
Some of Jeffery's studies are included in ''
The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book'', edited by
Ibn Warraq. They are also discussed in
Mohar Ali's ''The Qur'an and The Orientalists'':
[M. Mohar Ali, ''The Qur'an and The Orientalists'' p. 313 cited i]
The Qur'an's Pure Arabic and the Presence of Foreign Words
by Ansar Al-'Adl
Books
Books by Arthur Jeffery include:
*''The Textual History of the Qur'an''
*''The Mystic Letters of the Koran''
*''A Variant Text of the Fatiha''
*''The Orthography of the
Samarqand Codex
The Samarkand Kufic Quran (also known as the Uthman Quran, Samarkand codex, Samarkand manuscript and Tashkent Quran) is an 8th or 9th century manuscript Quran written in the territory of modern Iraq in the Kufic script. Today it is kept in the ...
''
*''Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'an''
*''The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an''
*''A Reader on Islam''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jeffery, Arthur
1892 births
1959 deaths
Australian Arabists
History of Quran scholars
Australian orientalists