John Garrard Burton-Page (19 December 1921 – 2005) was a British orientalist, Lecturer in the Art and Architecture of India at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He was an editor, and prolific contributor, to the Second Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam between 1960 and 1995.
Burton-Page's contributions to the Encyclopaedia of Islam fell into three main categories: Muslim sites and monuments; Muslim dynasties; and Islamic building typologies.[1] These contributions were reprinted in a posthumous collection edited by his former student George Michell.
John Burton-Page was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. Though he enrolled as a horn player at the Royal College of Music, his study was interrupted by World War II. He served in India and Burma, ending the war as a captain in the 1st King George V's Own Gurkha Rifles. Having become fluent in Hindi and Nepali, on return to England he entered as a mature student at Wadham College, Oxford to study Sanskrit. After graduating in 1950 he went to the School of Oriental and African Studies as a Temporary Lecturer in Nepali. He stayed at SOAS for over three decades, later as a Lecturer and Reader in Hindi, becoming increasingly interested in Indo-Islamic history and architecture.[2] His final post was as Reader in the Art & Archaeology of South Asia, and he continued to write and teach for some years after his formal retirement.
