In 1933, John won a scholarship to Birmingham University where he graduated with first-class honours in German in 1936. He later pursued the studies of Oriental languages at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen.
In 1941, he became a sapper (a soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties). In 1942, he was assigned to the Foreign Office where he remained until 1950.
In 1945 he married Margaret Elizabeth Dunbar. They had three daughters together.
He completed his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Vladimir Minorsky and went on to receive his doctorate in 1947.
He later became a professor of Persian at Manchester University. During this time, he produced a Persian dictionary and a grammar book of modern Persian. Additionally, he worked on translating and editing histories of Iran. Because of his dedication to the Persian language, he was the only European ever to receive the Iranian order of Sepas.
He died of heart failure on November 19, 1978, at the age of 62.
Bibliography
Boyle was the author, translator, or editor of the following works:
'Ala-ad-Din 'Ata-Malik Juvaini (1958). Boyle, John Andrew (ed.). Tarikh-i Jahangushay[The History of the World-Conqueror]. Translated by John Andrew Boyle. Harvard University Press. ISBN0674404009.{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) Juvaini stopped working on the original Persian-language text in 1260, leaving it in a disorganized and incomplete state. Mirza Muhammad Qazvini completed the best text and published it in 1937. The 1958 edition (Boyle's English translation) is in two volumes. A book review of the 1958 edition was published by The American Historical Review. A revised edition of the Boyle translation was published in 1997.
Boyle, John Andrew (1971). Sinor, Denis (ed.). "Ghazan's letter to Boniface VIII: where was it written?". Proceeding(s) of the Twenty-seventh International Congress of Orientalists, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag: 601–02. "Una lettera di Ghāzān Khan (anni di regno: 1295-1304), il mecenate di Rashīd al-Dīn, indirizzata a papa Bonifacio VIII (anni di pontificato: 1294-1303), datata 12 aprile 1302 e ora custodita nell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano, mostra gli stretti contatti tra l’Ilkhan e il Pontefice suo contemporaneo28." [A letter from Ghāzān Khan (reign: 1295-1304), the patron of Rashīd al-Dīn, addressed to Pope Boniface VIII (pontificate: 1294-1303), dated 12 April 1302 and now kept in the Vatican Secret Archives, shows the close contacts between the Ilkhan and his contemporary Pontiff. 28] (Quotation from "La strada per il Catai. Contatti tra Oriente e Occidente al tempo di Marco Polo" ISBN 8862507739, ISBN 9788862507738, Pages 213/216, Year 2019, Alvise Andreose, editor)
↑Elwell-Sutton, L. P. (1 January 1979). "Obituary: John Andrew Boyle". Folklore. 90 (1): 105–106. doi:10.1080/0015587X.1979.9716129. John Andrew Boyle was born in 1916 into a family of Scottish origin to whom cosmopolitan interests were almost second nature (his grandmother was Spanish, and his father, a well-known bibliophile and bookseller, was at one time ...
