Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb

Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, FBA (2 January 1895 – 22 October 1971), known as H. A. R. Gibb, was a Scottish historian on Orientalism.

Gibb was born on Wednesday, 2 January 1895, in Alexandria, Egypt, to Alexander Crawford Gibb (son of John Gibb of Gladstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland) and Jane Ann Gardner (of Greenock, Scotland). Alexander Crawford died in 1897, following which Gardner took up a teaching position in Alexandria. Hamilton returned to Scotland for his formal education at the age of five: first, four years of private tuition, after which he started at the Royal High School, Edinburgh in 1904, staying until 1912. His education was focused on classics, though it included French, German, and the physical sciences. In 1912, Hamilton matriculated at Edinburgh University, joining the new honours program in Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic). Hamilton's mother died in 1913 as he was studying in his second year at the university.

During World War I Gibb broke off his studies at the University of Edinburgh to serve for the British Royal Regiment of Artillery in France (from February 1917) and for several months in Italy as a commissioned officer. (He was commissioned at the age of 19.)

He was awarded a "war privilege" Master of Arts because of his service, until the Armistice with Germany in November 1918.

After the war Gibb studied Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, gaining his MA in 1922. His thesis, published later by the Royal Asiatic Society as a monograph, was on the Arab conquests of Central Asia.

From 1921 to 1937 Gibb taught Arabic at the then School of Oriental Studies, becoming a professor there in 1930. During this time he was an editor of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. In 1937 Gibb succeeded D. S. Margoliouth as Laudian Professor of Arabic with a Fellowship at St John's College, Oxford, where he stayed for eighteen years.

In 1955, Gibb became the James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic and University Professor at Harvard University.

Also in 1922 Gibb married Helen Jessie Stark. They had one son, Ian (1923–2005), and one daughter, Dorothy (1926–?, now Dorothy Greenslade).

• Fellow of British Academy, Danish Academy, American Philosophical Society
• Honorary fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Medieval Academy of America
• Member of Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo, Institut d'Egypte (Associate Member), Arab Academy of Damascus (Honorary), Iraqi Academy of Sciences