Serjeant, R. B. (Robert Bertram)

Robert Bertram Serjeant was born in Edinburgh on 23 March 1915. He studied at Edinburgh University where he obtained the degree of M.A. in 1935, before studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, to research Islamic textiles for the degree of Ph.D. which he obtained in 1939. He went to the Arabian Peninsula for the first time during the Second World War when he worked on Arabic dialects in the Aden area. He was commissioned into the Aden Government Guards and visited the remoter parts of the Aden Protectorate. In 1942, Serjeant worked for the BBC Arabic Service, editing the Arabic Listener .

At the end of the war he became a Lecturer at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London, 1945-1947, during which time he returned to Aden's Hadramawt with a research fellowship. In 1948 he became Reader at SOAS, and in 1955 he was Professor of Modern Arabic there.

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