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Geoffrey Khan

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Professor
Geoffrey Khan
FBA
Born (1958-02-01) 1 February 1958 (age 66)
Middlesbrough, England
Alma materSchool of Oriental and African Studies
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
Thesis Extraposition and Pronominal Agreement in Semitic Languages  (1984)

Geoffrey Allan Khan FBA (born 1 February 1958) is a British linguist and philologist of Semitic languages. He has held the post of Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge since 2012.[1] Considered one of the world's leading experts on Aramaic, he has published grammars for numerous Aramaic dialects [n 1] and he leads the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Database Archived 8 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine.[2] His other research has included Biblical Hebrew and medieval Arabic documents.

Biography

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Khan was born and raised in Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire.[3][4] His mother was English whereas his father was South Asian of Iranian descent. His paternal grandfather was an Ismaili Muslim who married a Catholic, and Geoffrey's father went to a Jesuit school in Bombay. One of his paternal great-grandmothers was the daughter of a Welsh Wesleyan missionary, and Khan also has Native American ancestry. His parents separated when he was quite young and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. He went to a "rough" comprehensive school where he suffered from racial abuse, and "took refuge in learning languages".[5][6]

In 1984, he gained his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies with a thesis entitled Extraposition and Pronominal Agreement in Semitic Languages. He became a researcher at the Cambridge University Library (1983-1993), working on the Cairo Genizah manuscripts. He then joined the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in 1993. In 2002, he was appointed Professor of Semitic Philology in Cambridge.[7]

His main area of research is in linguistics studies of Hebrew and Aramaic while the focus of his Aramaic research is on North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects.[8]

Honours

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Works

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Notes

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  1. ^ of Barwari, Qaraqosh, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja in Iraq; of Urmia and Sanandaj in Iran

References

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  1. ^ "Geoffrey Allan KAHN". Debretts. Archived from the original on 15 February 2013. Retrieved 23 January 2013.
  2. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 8 February 2018. Retrieved 7 February 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link).Sabar, Ariel (February 2013). "How to Save a Dying Language". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on 27 January 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2013.
  3. ^ Weam Namou (January 2021). "Interview with Prof. Geoffrey Khan from University of Cambridge". YouTube.
  4. ^ "Genizah Fragments Volume 6". The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit. Archived from the original on 22 September 2011. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
  5. ^ "The scholar whose career began in the books section of his local newsagent". This Cambridge Life. 31 May 2018. Archived from the original on 1 June 2018.
  6. ^ Terence Handley MacMath (1 February 2019). "Interview: Geoffrey Khan, Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge". Church Times. Archived from the original on 3 November 2021.
  7. ^ "Hebrew & Semitic Studies Teaching Staff". University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on 16 March 2012. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
  8. ^ "The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic Database Project". University of Cambridge. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
  9. ^ a b c d "Professor Geoffrey Khan (Staff Profile(". Cambridge University Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. 4 December 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2022.
Academic offices
Preceded by Regius Professor of Hebrew (Cambridge)
2012– 		Succeeded by
incumbent
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