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Douglas Morton Dunlop

British orientalist (1909-1987)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ1781660 ↗
Source-derived summary

Douglas Morton Dunlop (1909–1987) was a renowned British orientalist and scholar of Islamic and Eurasian history.

Early life and education

Born in England, Dunlop studied at Bonn and Oxford under the historian Paul Ernst Kahle (1875–1965). His work was also influenced by such scholars as Zeki Validi Togan, Mikhail Artamonov, and George Vernadsky. His uncle was B. K. Cunningham, an Anglican priest and academic.

Career

In the 1950s and 1960s, Dunlop was Professor of History at Columbia University in New York. He is best known for his influential histories of Arab civilization and the Khazar Khaganate. Dunlop was the "most esteemed scholar of the Khazar monarchy." He had command of the many languages needed to study the Khazars, information about whom is found in Arabic, Byzantine, Hebrew and Chinese literature.

Representative publications

As author

"The Arabic Tradition of the Summa Alexandrinorum", in Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 1982

Arab civilization to A.D. 1500 London: Longman, 1971.

Arab civilization to A.D. 1500, New York: Praeger, 1971.

The History of the Jewish Khazars, New York: Schocken Books, 1967.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Douglas Morton Dunlop” as british orientalist (1909-1987). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1909, 1987, 1875, 1965—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1909-02-25. The account is most persuasive where Douglas, Morton and Dunlop can be independently traced.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as british orientalist (1909-1987). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1781660. VIAF identifies the subject as 48310492. The Library of Congress control number is n88063058. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1909, 1987, 1875 and 1965.

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This entry incorporates text from “Douglas Morton Dunlop” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.