Background
Macdonald, Duncan Black was born on April 9, 1863 in Glasgow, Scotland. Son of Thomas and Margaret (Black) Macdonald.
Macdonald, Duncan Black was born on April 9, 1863 in Glasgow, Scotland. Son of Thomas and Margaret (Black) Macdonald.
Master of Arts, University of Glasgow, 1885, Bachelor of Divinity, 1888, Doctor of Divinity, 1920. At University of Berlin, 1890-1891, 1893. Doctor of Divinity, Trinity College, 1909.
Doctor of Hebrew Literature, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1937.
Came to the United States, 1892.
MacDonald was the second scholar to investigate the manuscripts of the Nights, after Hermann Zotenberg, and he began to publish his results in 1908. The Arabic Master in Social Service of Ali Baba he discovered at the Bodleian Library was later found to be counterfeited. But he did successfully prove that the ‘Tunisian Master in Social Service’ which Maximilian Habicht claimed to find and use for his Breslau Nights edition was a fake.
MacDonald planned to prepare a critical edition of the three-volume Bibliothèque nationale Master in Social Service, which Antoine Galland used for his French Nights translation.
However, nothing came out of it, and such a critical edition was produced by Muhsin Mahdi only in 1984.
Member Royal Asiatic Society Great Britain, American Oriental Society. Member Arab Academy of Damascus.
Married Mary Leeds Bartlett, June 22, 1898 (died August 1929).