Sir Thomas Walker Arnold

Thomas Walker Arnold (1864–1930) was an English orientalist. Educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he taught philosophy for ten years at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, where he learned Arabic and Persian and was a friend of the reformer Shibli Numani, and then at Government College, Lahore. Returning to England in 1904, he worked at the India Office library and from 1921 was professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the School of Oriental Studies in London. The Preaching of Islam (1896), his history of the faith's peaceful spread, was followed by The Caliphate (1924) and Painting in Islam (1928). He was knighted in 1921.