Roger Allen is an English scholar of Arabic literature. He has translated several Arabic works of literature into English, and has also written scholarly works on Arabic literature.
He was the first student at Oxford University to obtain a PhD degree in modern Arabic literature, which he did under the supervision of Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. His doctoral thesis was on Muhammad al-Muwaylihi’s narrative Hadith Isa ibn Hisham (Isa Ibn Hisham’s Tale), and was later published as a book titled A Period of Time (1974, 1992).
At the request of Dr Gaber Asfour, the Director-General of the Supreme Council for Culture in Egypt, he later prepared an edition of the complete works of Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (2002), and that of his father, Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi (2007).
In 1968, Allen moved from Bristol to Philadelphia to take up an academic position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he subsequently taught generations of students and Arabic scholars. He co-wrote an Arabic textbook with Adel Allouche, and was engaged with Arabic pedagogy throughout his career. After a 43-year career at UPenn, he retired in 2011, serving as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations for the last six years.
As a translator, Allen has brought forth into English numerous works of contemporary Arabic literature, a list of which is given below. His translations of Naguib Mahfouz were instrumental in bringing the Egyptian writer to global attention, and Allen also played a critical role in the nomination process that eventually led to Mahfouz winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.
Roger Allen was the first director of the Huntsman Program at the University of Pennsylvania along with Jamshed Ghandi.