Martin Lings (Abu
Bakr Siraj Ad-Din) (January 24, 1909 – May 12, 2005)
was a lifelong student and follower of Frithjof Schuon
and a British scholar on Islam, specializing in Sufism.
Lings was born in Burnage, Lancashire in 1909 to a
Protestant family. The young Lings gained an
introduction to travelling at a young age, spending
significant time in the United States due to his
father's employment.
Lings attended public school at Clifton College and went
on to Magdalen College, Oxford (BA (Oxon) English
Language and Literature). At Magdalen he was a student
of C. S. Lewis, who would become a close friend of his.
After graduating from Oxford Lings went to Kaunas
Education, in Lithuania, where he taught Anglo-Saxon and
Middle English. For Lings himself, however, the most
important event that occurred while he was at Oxford was
his discovery of the writings of the French Muslim
writer and traditionalist philosopher René Guénon and
the German spiritual authority and metaphysician
Frithjof Schuon. In 1938 Lings went to Basle to make
Schuon's acquaintance, and he remained Frithjof Schuon's
disciple and expositor for the rest of his life. In 1939
Lings went to Cairo, Egypt in order to visit a friend of
his, who was an assistant of René Guénon. Not long after
arriving in Cairo, his friend died, and Lings began
studying and learned the Arabic language.
Cairo became his home for over a decade; he became an
English teacher at the University of Cairo and produced
Shakespearean plays annually. Lings married Lesley
Smalley in 1944, and lived with his wife in a village
near the pyramids. Despite having settled comfortably in
Egypt, Lings was forced to leave in 1952 after
anti-British disturbances. Upon returning to the United
Kingdom, he continued his education, earning a BA in
Arabic and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African
Studies (University of London). His doctoral thesis
became a well-received book on Algerian Sufi Ahmad al-Alawi.
After completing
his doctorate, Lings worked at the British Museum and
later British Library, overseeing eastern manuscripts
and other textual works, rising to the position of
Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts
1970-73. A writer throughout this period, Lings output
increased in the last quarter of his life.
While his thesis
work on Ahmad al-Alawi had been well-regarded, his most
famous work was a biography about Prophet Muhammad,
written in 1983, that earned him acclaim in the Muslim
world, and prizes from the governments of Pakistan and
Egypt. His work was hailed as the "best biography of the
prophet in English" at the National Seerat Conference in
Islamabad. He also continued travelling extensively,
although he made his home in Kent. He died in 2005.
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