Gustaf Albert Ahlbert (26 January 1884 – 1943) was a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
missionary and
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
. He served with the
Mission Union of Sweden
The Mission Covenant Church of Sweden ( – until 2003 'Swedish Mission Covenant'), founded in 1878, was a Swedish evangelical free church in the Radical Pietist tradition. It was the second-largest Protestant denomination in Sweden, after the ...
in
Chinese Turkestan
Chinese Turkestan or Chinese Turkistan, is a geographical term or historical region corresponding to the region of the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang (south of the Tian Shan mountain range) or Xinjiang as a whole which was under the rule of ...
(present day Xinjiang).
Ahlbert had a competent knowledge of
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
,
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
and
Uyghur
Uyghur may refer to:
* Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia (West China)
** Uyghur language, a Turkic language spoken primarily by the Uyghurs
*** Old Uyghur language, a different Turkic language spoken in the Uyghur K ...
.
He was one of the last three missionaries to be expelled from
Kashgar
Kashgar () or Kashi ( zh, c=喀什) is a city in the Tarim Basin region of southern Xinjiang, China. It is one of the westernmost cities of China, located near the country's border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. For over 2,000 years, Kashgar ...
in 1939. After he was expelled, he worked among Muslims in India, and worked together with
Oskar Hermansson and
Dr. Nur Luke on the Uyghur Bible translation, until his death in Bombay in 1943.
References
Bibliography
*''Gustaf Ahlbert, Bachta Chan eller Lyckobarnet, Stockholm, 1934''
*''Gustaf Ahlbert, Habil: En Kristen Martyr i Östturkestan, Stockholm,. (1934)''
*''Gustaf Ahlbert, Letter specimens. The manner of writing letters and documents in the six cities, Kashghar: Svenska Missionstryckeriet (1920)''
*''Gustaf Ahlbert, Spelling-book for the language of the Six Cities, Kashghar: Swedish Mission Press, (1929)''
*''Gustaf Ahlbert, östtur-kestansk flickas historia''
*''John Hultvall, Mission och revolution i Centralasien: Svenska Missionsförbundets mission i Östturkestan 1892 - 1938, Stockholm: Gummesson 1981.''
*Rachel O. Wingate, The Steep Ascent: The Story of the Christian Church in Turkestan, British and Foreign Bible Society (1948?)
See also
Mission and Change in Eastern Turkestan(English Translation of select chapters of ''Mission och revolution i Centralasien'')
Swedish Protestant missionaries
Protestant missionaries in China
1884 births
1943 deaths
Translators of the Bible into Uyghur
Christian missionaries in Central Asia
Swedish expatriates in China
20th-century Swedish translators
Missionary linguists
People from Vetlanda
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