13 Facts About Nabia Abbott

Nabia Abbott was an American scholar of Islam, papyrologist and paleographer.

Nabia Abbott was the first woman professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Nabia Abbott gained worldwide recognition for her researches into the emergence of the Arabic script and the oldest written documents of Islam.

Nabia Abbott was a pioneer in the study of early Muslim women.

Nabia Abbott was born on January 31,1897, in Mardin, Ottoman Empire.

Nabia Abbott's father was a Christian merchant whose business activities brought his family first to Mosul, then to Baghdad and finally to Bombay.

In 1923, Nabia Abbott moved with her family to the United States and received a master's degree in 1925 from Boston University.

Nabia Abbott became a Professor of Islamic Studies at the Oriental Institute in 1949.

Nabia Abbott published these documents and helped expand the Institute's collection.

Nabia Abbott published an essay in 1949 about a 9th-century fragment of the Arabian Nights, which contains the title and first page of the works.

Nabia Abbott demonstrated its assistance in elucidating early Arabic palaeography as well as the development of early Islamic books in paper.

Nabia Abbott proved it was nearly a century older than earliest known references to the Arabian Nights, and established a chronology of the evolution of the Arabian Nights, which has remained valid since then.

Nabia Abbott, on the other hand, argued that hadith was an original practice in Islam, held in written form until they entered the canonical books.