Arthur Jeffery was a Protestant Australian professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of Semitic languages

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

 from 1921 at the School of Oriental Studies in Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, and from 1938 until his death jointly at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 and Union Theological Seminary

Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with nearby Columbia...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. He is the author of extensive historical studies of Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

ern manuscripts.

His important works include Materials for the history of the text of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

: the old codices and The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an, which traces the origins of 318 foreign (non-Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

) words found in the Qur'an.

Some of Jeffery's studies are included in The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book

Origins of the Koran

:This article concerns the book. For a textual history of the Qur'an, see History of the Qur'an.The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book, is a 1998 book edited by secularist author Ibn Warraq...

, edited by Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq is the pen name of a polemical author of Pakistani origin who is critical of Islam, and who founded the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society . He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qur'anic criticism...

. They are also discussed in Mohar Ali's The Qur'an and The Orientalists:

Books

Books by Arthur Jeffery include:

• The Textual History of the Qur'an
• The Mystic Letters of the Koran
• A Variant Text of the Fatiha
• The Orthography of the Samarqand Codex
• Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'an
• The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an