Wheeler Thackston
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr. (born 1944) is an Orientalist and distinguished editor and translator of numerous Chaghatai, Arabic and Persian literary and historical sources.
Thackston is a graduate of Princeton's Oriental Studies department and Harvard's Near Eastern Studies department (Ph.D., 1974), where he has been Professor of the Practice of Persian and other Near Eastern Languages since 1972. He studied at Princeton under Martin Dickson and at Harvard with Annemarie Schimmel.
Thackston's best known works are his Persian and Classical and Koranic Arabic grammars and his translations of the Baburnama, the memoirs of the Mughal prince and emperor Babur, and the memoirs of Emperor Jehangir, or the Jehangirnama. He has also produced important manuals or editions of texts in Lebanese Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Syriac, Uzbek, Luri, and Kurdish.
Thackston has also studied Urdu and Sindhi but has not published texts from these languages.
Thackston recently retired from his position at Harvard University.
He is thought to be an excellent cook, host, and tap dancer, although these talents are less well attested.
