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John Alfred Haywood

جون ألفريد هايوود

Notable figure 1913–1978 · Source: ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Humaid, Aʿmal al-mustashriqin al-ʿarabiyya fi al-muʿjam al-ʿarabi: dirasa wa-taqwim (PhD thesis, Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, 1433 AH), p. 171 · Second source: Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections: catalogue of the papers of John Alfred Haywood (1913-1978)

From the United Kingdom; worked in Sudan

Field: Lexicography

Affiliation

Historian of Arabic lexicography (1960)

Biography

He served in the Sudan Government's education department (1946–1955), then taught Arabic at the School of Oriental Studies, Durham, rising to Reader (1955–1978). He wrote Arabic Lexicography: its History, and its Place in the General History of Lexicography (Leiden, 1960; 2nd ed. 1965), arguing that the Arabs stand at the centre of lexicography in time and place, ancient and modern, East and West. He wrote on Abu ʿAmr al-Shaybani's Kitab al-Jim, suggesting its title was once Alif Baʾ Jim and that several later books followed its method. With H. M. Nahmad he wrote A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language (1962).