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Sir William Jones
Image: James Posselwhite, after Joshua Reynolds, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Sir William Jones

وليم جونز

Notable figure 1746–1794 · Source: Yahya Murad, Muʿjam asmaʾ al-mustashriqin (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004), p. 453 (no al-Aqiqi page matched) · Second source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record: Jones, William (1746-1794)

From the United Kingdom; worked in India

Field: Literature and poetry

Affiliation

Translator of the Seven Muʿallaqat into English (1782)

Biography

A graduate of Oxford, he learned Arabic and Persian from a man of Aleppo living there. He wrote a commentary on Asian poetry in six books, mostly selections from Arabic and Persian literature (1774), and published the Seven Muʿallaqat with text and English translation (London, 1782). He then became a judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta (1783), where he founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784).