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Joseph de Somogyi

جوزيف دي شوموجي

Notable figure 1899–1976 · Source: Najib al-Aqiqi, al-Mustashriqun, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1964), vol. 3, p. 912; Yahya Murad, Muʿjam asmaʾ al-mustashriqin, p. 742 · Second source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record: Desomogyi, Joseph (1899-1976)

From Hungary; worked in the United States

Field: Literature and poetry

Affiliation

Scholar of al-Damiri's Hayat al-hayawan and Arabic adab

Biography

Born in Budapest, he studied at its university under Goldziher and then Germanus, and in 1956 settled in the United States as professor of Arabic at Brandeis University. He worked closely on al-Damiri's Hayat al-hayawan, its sources and its debt to al-Jahiz, published an elegy on the fall of Baghdad (1933), and wrote on the character of Arabic literature under the Umayyads and Abbasids (1957).