Anthony Ashley Bevan

He said in his introduction to the third volume of Al-Mufaddaliyat, in 1924: "I desire to express my deep gratitude to Professor Theodor Nöldeke, who from the first had contributed much towards the elucidation of the Arabic text and most kindly answered a large number of questions which I addressed to him with regard to various difficulties".

[2] Educated in Lausanne and Strassburg, Bevan had already laid the foundations of his immense Semitic learning when in 1884 he came from Nöldeke to William Wright.

It had an annual stipend of only £50, but Bevan had ample private means (his father was the head of the banking house which would become Barclays) and was soon dispensed from the one obligation of lecturing formally once a year.

He was fastidious and scrupulously careful: as he observed in the course of one of his typically uncompromising reviews, ‘even slight inaccuracies are liable to become sources of confusion’.

If Bevan's output was slight he spared himself no pains in assisting his colleagues, among other ways by reading their proofs: many, including his brother Edwyn, an archaeologist and Hellenist, were indebted to his scholarship.

He was a benefactor of the University Library and Museum of Archaeology, gave all his books to the Faculty of Oriental Languages, and left £10,000 to Trinity.