Arthur John Arberry (12 May 1905, inPortsmouth – 2 October 1969, inCambridge)FBA was a British scholar ofArabic literature,Persian studies, andIslamic studies. He was educated atPortsmouth Grammar School andPembroke College, Cambridge. His English translation of theQur'an,The Koran Interpreted, is popular amongst academics worldwide.^[1][2]

Arberry served as Head of the Department of Classics atCairo University inEgypt. He eventually returned home to become the Assistant Librarian at the Library of theIndia Office. During the Second World War he was a Postal Censor in Liverpool^[3] and was then seconded to theMinistry of Information, which was housed in the newly constructedSenate House of theUniversity of London. Arberry held the Chair of Persian at the School of Oriental and African StudiesSOAS, University of London, in 1944–47. He subsequently became theSir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic atCambridge University and a Fellow ofPembroke College, Cambridge, his alma mater, from 1947 until his death in 1969. He is buried inAscension 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.^[4][5]

Arberry is also notable for introducingRumi's works to the west through his selective translations and for translating the important anthology of medieval Andalusian Arabic poetryThe Pennants of the Champions and the Standards of the Distinguished. His interpretation ofMuhammad Iqbal's writings, edited byBadiozzaman 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,^[6] in the bilingual anthologyDun Karm, Poet of Malta.

• The Rubai'yat of Jalal Al-DinRumi: 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 orAlfred Chester Beatty, the "newly discovered manuscript" was a twentieth-century forgery.^[7]
• Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950)
• 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^[7]
• 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 ofFihi Ma Fihi, (Samuel Weiser, New York, 1972)
• Mystical Poems of Rumi, Translated by A. J. Arberry, (University of Chicago Press, 2009)

• Wickens, G M,"Arberry, Arthur John, 1905-1969"Proceedings of the British Academy 58, 1973

• Arthur John Arberry atFind a Grave
• Arberry'sEnglish Quran Translation at the

  Online Quran Project

  Tanzil Project

• Arberry, Arthur John article atEncyclopædia Iranica

• 1905 births
• 1969 deaths
• People educated at The Portsmouth Grammar School
• Iqbal scholars
• Translators of the Quran into English
• British Islamic studies scholars
• British Arabists
• Iranologists
• Arabic–English translators
• Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge
• Fellows of the British Academy
• British orientalists
• Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge
• Academic staff of Cairo University
• Rumi scholars
• Academics of SOAS University of London
• 20th-century British translators
• Writers from Portsmouth
• Sir Thomas Adams's Professors of Arabic

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