Martin Lings

Martin Lings (Burnage, Manchester, 1909 – Kent, 2005) was an English writer, Islamic scholar and philosopher, also known by the Islamic name Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn. A disciple of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon, he is best remembered for his biography of the Prophet Muhammad, written in English and widely read on the subject. His career linked English literature, Arabic scholarship and the Sufi spiritual tradition.

Raised in a Protestant family, he later left religious belief and studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became a close friend of C. S. Lewis. At Oxford he came across the work of René Guénon and Schuon, which turned his interest toward traditional metaphysics. In 1938 he travelled to Basel to meet Schuon and joined the branch of the Alawiyya tariqa that Schuon led, a bond he kept for the rest of his life.

In 1939 he moved to Cairo, where he began studying Arabic and taught English at the university. He staged Shakespeare productions there each year, and in 1944 he married Lesley Smalley. After anti-British disturbances in 1952 he returned to the United Kingdom, earning a doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies with a thesis on the Algerian Sufi Ahmad al-Alawi. He then worked at the British Museum and the British Library, eventually becoming Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts.

His output grew in the last part of his life. Alongside his studies of Sufism, he wrote on Shakespeare, arguing that the plays hold esoteric and spiritual meanings. His Muhammad biography, published in 1983, won him recognition in the Muslim world and prizes from the governments of Pakistan and Egypt. His legacy lies chiefly in spreading the traditionalist view of Islam to English readers and in his spiritual reading of Shakespeare.