The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London.
Khwārezmian is an extinct Eastern Iranian language closely related to Sogdian. The language was spoken in the area of Khwarezm (Chorasmia), centered in the lower Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea.
Patricia Crone was a Danish historian specialising in early Islamic history. Crone was a member of the Revisionist school of Islamic studies and questioned the historicity of the Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam.
Gerald R. Hawting is a British historian and Islamicist.
Hugh Nigel Kennedy is a British medievalist and academic. He specialises in the history of the early Islamic Middle East, Muslim Iberia and the Crusades. From 1997 to 2007, he was Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London.
Rawwadid, Ravvadid, or Banū Rawwād (955–1071) was a Sunni Muslim Kurdish dynasty, centered in the northwestern region of Adharbayjan (Azerbaijan) between the late 8th and early 13th centuries.
Eileen Edna Le Poer Power was a British economic historian and medievalist.
Ernest Julius Walter Simon, was a German sinologist and librarian.
Vladimir Fyodorovich Minorsky was a Russian academic, historian, and scholar of Oriental studies, best known for his contributions to the study of history of Iran and the Iranian peoples such as Persians, Laz people, Lurs, and Kurds.
Sir Edward Denison Ross was an orientalist and linguist, specializing in languages of the Middle East, Central and East Asia. He was the first director of the University of London's School of Oriental Studies from 1916 to 1937.
Charles Roskelly Bawden, FBA was a professor of the Mongolian language in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London from 1970 to 1984.
David Appleyard is a British academic and an specialist in Ethiopian languages and linguistics.
Simon Everard Digby was an English oriental scholar, translator, writer and collector who was awarded the Burton Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society and was a former Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, the Honorary Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society and Assistant Keeper in the Department of Eastern Art of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He was also the foremost British scholar of pre-Mughal India.
David Llewellyn Snellgrove, FBA was a British Tibetologist noted for his pioneering work on Buddhism in Tibet as well as his many travelogues.
Henri Cordier was a French linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, editor and Orientalist. He was President of the Société de Géographie in Paris. Cordier was a prominent figure in the development of East Asian and Central Asian scholarship in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Though he had little actual knowledge of the Chinese language, Cordier had a particularly strong impact on the development of Chinese scholarship, and was a mentor of the noted French sinologist Édouard Chavannes.
Harry Leonard Shorto was a British philologist and linguist who specialized on the Mon language and Mon-Khmer studies. He authored both a modern Mon dictionary and a dictionary of Mon epigraphy. He worked for most of his career at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, finally as Professor of Mon-Khmer Studies at the University of London until his retirement in 1984.
Robin("Rob")Leonard Bidwell was an English orientalist and author. He published many books about Yemen and Arabia as well as about French and British colonial history.
John E. Cort is an American indologist. He is a professor of Asian and Comparative Religions at Denison University, where he is also Chair of the Department of Religion. He has studied Jainism and the history of Jain society over four decades, authored several books on Jainism, and is one of the editors of the forthcoming Brill Encyclopedia of Jainism. According to a review published in 2006 by Peter Flügel, the influence of the studies and publications of Cort on Jainism "have been immense", and in some respects dominated the field of Jain studies.
Cyril John Gadd, was a British Assyriologist, Sumerologist, and curator. He was Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum from 1948 to 1955, and Professor of Ancient Semitic Languages and Civilizations at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 1955 to 1960. Having served in the British Army during the First World War, he joined the British Museum after demobilisation and also worked on excavations at Ur, Carchemish, Alalakh and Nimrud. Having risen to Keeper, he left the British Museum to enter academia, and was appointed professor emeritus on his retirement in 1961.
John Brough, FBA was a Scottish scholar of Sanskrit, Indologist, Buddhologist and Sinologist. He was Professor of Sanskrit at the University of London (1948–67) and at the University of Cambridge (1967–84).
