Arthur Jeffery was a Professor of Semitic Languages at Columbia University and at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Jeffery wrote many articles and books during his career and conducted extensive research, searching the Middle East for manuscripts. His most important works include Materials for the history of the text of the Qur'an: the old codices ... and The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an, which traces the origins of 275 foreign (non-Arabic) words found in the Qur'an.

Additional References:

Books and Articles by Arthur Jeffery
Arthur Jeffery - A Tribute

A reader submitted this information:

I was doing some genealogy research recently and came upon your articles about Dr. Jeffery. I want to add these comments to your information about him. Dr. Jeffery and his wife Elsie were regular summer visitors to a summer resort in Nova Scotia Canada in the 1950’s. One summer while vacationing there Dr. Jeffery took ill and later died. Mrs. Jeffery decided that he should be buried here and my parents, and now I, have tended his stone in the cemetery ever since. I don’t recall that Mrs. Jeffery ever came back, but every year a cheque would arrive for flowers and my father would buy them and place them on the grave. I believe that Mrs. Jeffery had been living in Italy but am not positive. Eventually she passed away and she is buried here as well.

The resort they stayed at, and where he took ill and died, was “The Milford House”, in South Milford near Annapolis Royal Nova Scotia. Dr. and Mrs. Jeffery are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery on the outskirts of Annapolis Royal, in Lequille. The particulars on his stone are 1892 to 1959. Also on the stone is engraved, in Latin, Supra Spem Spero.

LM

Gravestone of Dr. and Mrs. Jeffery

According to the funeral home records, Arthur Jeffery was born on 18 October 1892 in Melbourne, Australia. He died 2 August 1959 at South Milford. The funeral was held on 4 August 1959.

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