My father, Roger Boase, who has died aged 77, was a scholar of Spanish Fifteenth- century cancionero poetry and historical past.
Roger’s magnum opus, revealed in 2017, was Secrets and techniques of Pinar’s Recreation, analysing throughout two volumes a single Iberian poem from 1496 and all of the literary, historic, botanical and heraldic references therein.
Earlier than his demise he was near finishing a second long-term challenge, telling the story of Anselm Turmeda (later Abdallah at-Tarjuman, 1352-1432), a Franciscan friar who transformed to Islam and documented his transition of religion in Catalan and Arabic. Roger himself turned a Sufi, beneath Sheikh Nazim, within the Seventies.
Born in Glasgow, the son of Alan Boase, a French professor, and Grizelle (nee Forster), Roger was educated at Eton, spent a 12 months at Trinity School Dublin after which switched to Pembroke School, Cambridge, to review French and Spanish. There he met Aisha Ahmad, who was on the identical diploma course. They married in 1969 and each accomplished PhDs in London.
Whereas many teachers spend their postdoctoral years writing their first e book, Roger got here to his PhD viva with two already beneath his belt: The Origin and That means of Courtly Love (1977) and The Troubadour Revival (1978), the primary of which continues to be used to show undergraduates.
Each traced the rise of ideas in Spain equivalent to chivalry and courtly love within the wake of the disintegration of medieval values and establishments. Roger additionally explored Islamic concepts that discovered their manner into Spanish tradition; concepts that had been regularly forgotten within the “othering” of the Muslim world and subsequent expulsion of Muslims from Spain in 1609.
After six years educating English on the College of Fez in Morocco, Roger returned to the UK in 1983 and was a analysis fellow at Westfield School, now Queen Mary College of London, for 4 a long time. He was an honorary senior fellow there and by no means retired. A robust advocate for spiritual pluralism and peace-building, he edited Islam and International Dialogue (2006), a quantity of essays by Christians, Jews and Muslims, and Pashtun Tales (2008), people tales that Aisha had collected on the Pakistan-Afghan frontier.
In addition to being a meticulous tutorial, Roger was a real gentleman adored by all who knew him – and he was an awesome household man.
He’s survived by Aisha, their two sons, Muin and me, two granddaughters and two of his three brothers.
