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24 January 1909

Martin Lings (Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn)

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Martin Lings was an English writer, Islamic scholar, and philosopher and an authority on the work of William Shakespeare. He is best known as the author of Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, first published in 1983 and still in print. The presidents of Pakistan and Egypt each presented Lings with an award for the book, and The Islamic Quarterly called it "an enthralling story that combines impeccable scholarship with a rare sense of the sacred worth of the subject." His work was hailed as the "best biography of the prophet in English" at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad

 He converted to Islam while in Egypt and became a widely acclaimed British scholar whose books on Islamic philosophy, mysticism and art reflected his own deep belief in Sufism, the esoteric, purely spiritual dimension of Islam. He was the keeper of Oriental manuscripts at the British Museum and British Library and his contribution to Shakespeare scholarship was to point out the deeper esoteric meanings found in Shakespeare's plays, and the spirituality of Shakespeare himself.

Martin Lings was also a poet, with C.S. Lewis saying of some of Lings’ poetry that it was “sheer inspiration”. Indeed, poetry was Lings’ first calling, and he was steeped in the music and eloquence of early English poetry, the verses of Dante, and, of course, the genius of Shakespeare.

Martin Lings died on May 12, 2005, at the age of ninety-six, in his home in the Kent countryside in south England.

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