Peter Arnold Lienhardt (12 March 1928 – 17 March 1986) was a British social anthropologist.

Life

Lienhardt was born in Bradford on 12 March 1928Ahmed Al-Shahi, "Peter Lienhardt 1928-1986: Biographical Notes and Bibliography", ''JASO'' (Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford) 27/2 (1996) to Godfrey Lienhardt and Jennie Liendhart ( Benn). He was educated at

Batley Grammar School Batley Grammar School is a co-educational free school in Batley, West Yorkshire, England. History The school was founded in 1612 by the Rev. William Lee. An annual founder's day service is held in his memory at Batley Parish Church, as req ...

and, like his brother

Godfrey Lienhardt Ronald Godfrey Lienhardt (17 January 1921 – 9 November 1993) was a British anthropologist. He took many photographs of the Dinka people he studied. He wrote about their religion in ''Divinity and Experience: the Religion of the Dinka''. Lif ...

, at

Downing College, Cambridge Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the olde ...

, where he studied Arabic and Persian. After military service in the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

he undertook post-graduate studies in

social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

Lincoln College, Oxford Lincoln College (formally, The College of the Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, situated on Turl Street in central Oxford. Lincoln was founded in 1427 by Richard Fleming, the ...

, earning a doctorate in 1957 with a thesis on "The Shaikhdoms of Eastern Arabia".Ahmed Al-Shahi, "Obituary: Dr Peter Lienhardt, 1928-1986", ''Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies)'', 13/1 (1986), pp. 131-133. In the mid 1950s he carried out fieldwork in

Persian Gulf countries The Arab states of the Persian Gulf refers to a group of Arab states which border the Persian Gulf. There are seven member states of the Arab League in the region: Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. ...

for his doctorate, and as a senior research fellow at the East African Institute for Social Research at

Makerere College Makerere University, Kampala (; Mak) is Uganda's largest and oldest institution of higher learning, first established as a technical school in 1922. It became an independent national university in 1970. Today, Makerere University is composed of ni ...

, Uganda, he carried out fieldwork in

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...

in the late 1950s. He carried out further fieldwork in Iran in the mid 1960s. Lienhardt was appointed to a faculty lectureship in Middle Eastern sociology at the Institute of Social Anthropology,

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. He died on 17 March 1986. In 1987 the

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) is a British organization whose purpose is to encourage and advance the study of the Middle East in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1973 and publishes the ''British Journal of Midd ...

published a volume in his honour, ''The Diversity of the Muslim Community: Anthropological Essays in Memory of Peter Lienhardt'', edited by Ahmed Al-Shahi.

Work

*Hasani Bin Ismail, ''The Medicine Man: Swifa Ya Nguvumali'', edited and translated by Peter Lienhardt (Oxford Library of African Literature, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968). *Peter Lienhardt, ''Disorientations – A Society in Flux: Kuwait in the 1950s'', edited by Ahmed AI-Shahi (Middle East Cultures Series 19; Reading, Ithaca Press, 1993). *Peter Lienhardt, ''Shaikhdoms of Eastern Arabia'', edited by Ahmed AI-Shahi (Palgrave, 2001).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lienhardt, Peter 1928 births 1986 deaths Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford Academics of the University of Oxford British anthropologists Writers from Bradford Social anthropologists 20th-century anthropologists