Background
SERJEANT, Robert was born on March 23, 1915 in Edinburgh. Son of R. T. R. Serjeant and Agnes Beatson Serjeant (nee Blair).
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SERJEANT, Robert was born on March 23, 1915 in Edinburgh. Son of R. T. R. Serjeant and Agnes Beatson Serjeant (nee Blair).
He received his Master of Arts in 1935, and moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge, completing his Doctor of Philosophy dissertation on Islamic textiles under the supervision of Professor California Storey.
In 1940, he was working in Aden, but with the Second World War in progress, he was commissioned into the Aden Government Guards, spending his time in the Subayhi country of southern Arabia. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1941, where he edited the "Arabic Listener" at the British Broadcasting Corporation. When the war ended, he restarted his academic career at SOAS, and in 1947 went to research the language and society of the Hadhramawt region in Arabia. He published a study called "Prose and Poetry from Hadhramawt" in 1951.
In 1955, he became the chair of Modern Arabic at SOAS. He was also director of the Middle East Centre at Pembroke College, Cambridge, remaining in this post until his retirement in 1981.
Following Arberry"s death in 1969, he was appointed Sir Thomas Adams"s Professor of Arabic. After his retirement, he returned to his native Scotland where he continued his academic research.
Two of his notable works are "The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast", published by the Clarendon Press in 1963, and "Sanaa: an Arabian Islamic city" (1983) which he wrote and co-edited with Professor Ronald Lewcock. The latter is regarded as the definitive work on the Yemeni capital.
Bob Serjeant married Marion Robertson, a doctor, in 1941.
He died in the garden of his cottage in Denhead, Street Andrews in April 1993. In 1995, his widow gifted his library of nearly 5,000 volumes on Islam and the Yemen as well as his unpublished manuscripts to Edinburgh University.
Editorial Board Cambridge History of Arabic Literature since 1983, Academy, of the Arabic Language, Cairo.
Married Marion Keith Robertson in 1941.