Peter Malcolm Holt, FBA (28 November 1918 – 2 November 2006) was a historian of the Middle East and Sudan., British Academy, 2008 He was generally known as P. M. Holt.

Biography

The son of a Unitarian minister, Holt attended Lord Williams's School in

Thame Thame is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about east of the city of Oxford and southwest of Aylesbury. It derives its name from the River Thame which flows along the north side of the town and forms part of the county border wi ...

, Oxfordshire, and studied history at

University College, Oxford University College (in full The College of the Great Hall of the University of Oxford, colloquially referred to as "Univ") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It has a claim to being the oldest college of the unive ...

. He then obtained a diploma of education and worked as a secondary school teacher in

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Anglo-Egyptian Sudan ( ar, السودان الإنجليزي المصري ') was a condominium of the United Kingdom and Egypt in the Sudans region of northern Africa between 1899 and 1956, corresponding mostly to the territory of present-day ...

1941–53 (initially at Gordon Memorial College, the country's leading school), and then as Government Archivist and part-time lecturer at the University College of Khartoum 1952–55. During these years he became proficient in Arabic. Holt completed a PhD at Oxford on “The personal rule of the Khalifa Abdallahi al-Ta'aishi”, on the second ruler of the Sudanese

Mahdist State The Mahdist State, also known as Mahdist Sudan or the Sudanese Mahdiyya, was a state based on a religious and political movement launched in 1881 by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah (later Muhammad al-Mahdi) against the Khedivate of Egypt, which had ...

''(1885-1899),'' initially under the supervision of

H.A.R. Gibb Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb (2 January 1895 – 22 October 1971), known as H. A. R. Gibb, was a Scottish historian and Orientalist. Early life and education Gibb was born on Wednesday, 2 January 1895, in Alexandria, Egypt, ...

. He taught at SOAS, the University of London as Lecturer from 1955 to 1982, then

Reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

, then Professor of Arab History, and finally Professor of the Near and Middle East from 1975 to 1982.

Research

Holt was the per-eminent historian of the Sudan. His first book, ''The Mahdist State in the Sudan 1881–1898. A Study of its Origins, Development, and Overthrow'' (1958) was based on his PhD thesis, and was followed by ''A modern history of the Sudan, from the Funj Sultanate to the present day'' (1965, later republished as ''The history of the Sudan from the coming of Islam to the present day)''. He then expanded his interests geographically, publishing ''Egypt and the Fertile Crescent 1516-1922, A Political History'' in 1966). He then added a second field, becoming an authority on the

Mamluk Sultanate The Mamluk Sultanate ( ar, سلطنة المماليك, translit=Salṭanat al-Mamālīk), also known as Mamluk Egypt or the Mamluk Empire, was a state that ruled Egypt, the Levant and the Hejaz (western Arabia) from the mid-13th to early 16t ...

, (1250-1517), publishing ''The memoirs of a Syrian prince: Abu'l-Fidā, Sultan of Ḥamāh (672-732)'' (1983) and ''Early Mamluk diplomacy (1260 - 1290): Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian rulers'' (1995). A general history of the Near East, ''The Age of the Crusades, The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517'' was published in 1986. Holt was also one of the founding editors of The Cambridge History of Islam, along with Ann K. S. Lambton and

Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near ...

. His work on Sudan was carried forward by one of his PhD students, Seán O'Fahey.

Works

*Holt, P.M., ''The Mahdist State in the Sudan 1881–1898. A Study of its Origins, Development, and Overthrow'' (Oxford, 1958). *Holt, P.M., ''A modern history of the Sudan, from the Funj Sultanate to the present day'' (London, 1965). *Holt, P. M., ''Egypt and the Fertile Crescent 1516-1922, A Political History'' (London, 1966). *Holt, P. M., ''Studies in the History of the Near East'' (London, 1973). *Holt, P. M., ''Cambridge History of Islam'' (Cambridge, 1978). *Holt, P. M., ''The memoirs of a Syrian prince : Abu'l-Fidā, Sultan of Ḥamāh (672-732)'' (Wiesbaden, 1983) *Holt, P. M., ''The Age of the Crusades, The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517'' (London, 1986). *Holt, P. M., ''Early Mamluk diplomacy (1260 - 1290): Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian rulers'' (Leiden 1995). *Holt, P. M., ''The Crusader States and Their Neighbours, 1098-1291'' (Pearson 2004).

References

HOLT, Prof. Peter Malcolm
''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, 1920–2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 1918 births 2006 deaths People educated at Lord Williams's School Alumni of University College, Oxford Historians of the Middle East Academics of SOAS University of London 20th-century British historians Fellows of the British Academy {{UK-historian-stub