Alfred Felix Landon Beeston

Author

1911 – 1995

71

Who was Alfred Felix Landon Beeston?

Alfred Felix Landon Beeston was an English Orientalist best known for his studies of Arabic language and literature, and of ancient Yemeni inscriptions, as well as the history of pre-Islamic Arabia. His works were generally published under the name A. F. L. Beeston.

Beeston was born at Barnes in southwest London, and educated at Westminster School where he was a King's Scholar. At age 14 he grew fascinated with South Arabian inscriptions at the British Museum, which he attempted to decipher by means of an appendix in James Theodore Bent's Sacred City of the Ethiopians, asking for a Koran and Arabic dictionary as school prizes. In 1929 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, already determined to become a librarian in oriental studies; in 1933 he got a first in Arabic and Persian. In 1935, during the course of his D.Phil. under D. S. Margoliouth, on the subject of several Sabaic inscriptions, he accepted a post at the Bodleian Library. He completed the thesis in 1937.

He served in the Intelligence Corps between November 1940 and April 1946, stationed in Palestine. After his return to the Bodleian, he became Sub-Librarian and Keeper of Oriental Books and Manuscripts. In 1957 he was elected Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford, which chair he held until retirement in 1979.

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Born
Feb 23, 1911
London Borough of Richmond upon Thames
Education
  • Westminster School
  • Christ Church, Oxford
Died
Sep 29, 1995

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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