C. Edmund Bosworth

Clifford Edmund Bosworth (1928-2015) was born in Sheffield, England, and received his B.A. in Modern History from Oxford University in 1952. He then studied at Edinburgh University under W. Montgomery Watt and L. P. Elwell-Sutton, receiving his his Master's in 1956 and his Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies in 1961. In 1967, he acccepted the position as Chair of Arabic Studies at Manchester University, retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1990.

His interest in the history of medieval eastern Iran is reflected in three earlier books: The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran (1963), The Later Ghaznavids (1977), and Sistān under the Arabs (1986). His other books include The Medieval Islamic Underworld (1976), The Islamic Dynasties (1967), Bahā’ al-Din al-‘Āmilī and his Literary Anthologies (1989), and three volumes of the translation of The History of al-Ṭabarī as well as translations of The History of Beyhaqi (2011) and Gardizi’s Ornament of History (2011). He has written chapters for vols. III, IV, and V of The Cambridge History of Iran and several hundred articles for the second edition of The Encyclopcedia of Islam, Encyclopaedia Iranica, The Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Encyclopcedia Britannica, and Encyclopaedia Americana.

Professor Bosworth was also a distinguished editor, having served for many years in various capacities on the editorial staffs of The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Encyclopaedia Iranica, The Journal of Semitic Studies, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, and the Tabari Translation Project. He was a member of the councils of the Royal Asiatic Society, the British Institute of Persian Studies, and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, and was in 1992 elected a Fellow of the British Academy.