(Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn)

 (1909-2005)

Martin Lings was born in Burnage, Lancashire. After a classical education, he read English at Oxford where he was a pupil and later a close friend of C. S. Lewis. In 1935, he went to Lithuania where he lectured on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English at the University of Kaunus. After four years, he went to Egypt and was given a lectureship in English Literature at Cairo University where he lectured mainly on Shakespeare. He later returned to England and took a degree in Arabic at London University and subsequently joined the staff of the British Museum where he was Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts until his retirement in 1973. He is the author of The Sacred Art of Shakespeare, Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions, The Eleventh Hour, Symbol & Archetype, The Book of Certainty (the Sufi Doctrines of Faith, Vision and Gnosis), A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century, What is Sufism? and Sufi Poems: A Mediaeval Anthology. His Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources has been acclaimed as the best biography of the Prophet. He was also the author of several articles for the new Encyclopaedia of Islam, of the article on Sufism in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and participated in various Islamic conferences form time to time. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and member of its council and also a member of the British Museum Society.