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.

In 1912, Hamilton matriculated at University of Edinburgh, joining the new honours program in Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic).

(family knowledge) During World War I, Gibb broke off his studies at the University of Edinburgh to serve for the Royal Artillery of the United Kingdom in France from February 1917 and for several months in Italy as a commissioned officer.

[4] His MA thesis, published later by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland as a monograph, was on the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana.

[6] In 1937 Gibb succeeded David Samuel Margoliouth as Laudian Professor of Arabic with a Fellowship at St John's College, Oxford, where he stayed for eighteen years.