Nabia Abbott

Nabia Abbott was born in Turkey in 1897. As a young child she was taken by her family across the Middle East to India, where she was educated in British schools and remained until after the First World War. Later she lived in Iraq and finally in the United States, where in 1933 she became the first female faculty member of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. A leading scholar of Arabic, she specialised in deciphering early Islamic papyri. Abbott was the author of seven books...See more

Nabia Abbott was born in Turkey in 1897. As a young child she was taken by her family across the Middle East to India, where she was educated in British schools and remained until after the First World War. Later she lived in Iraq and finally in the United States, where in 1933 she became the first female faculty member of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. A leading scholar of Arabic, she specialised in deciphering early Islamic papyri. Abbott was the author of seven books and dozens of magazine articles. She died in 1981. See less