Karl Vilhelm Zetterstéen (18 August 1866 – 1953) was a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

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Born in Orsa

Orsa

Orsa is a locality and the seat of Orsa Municipality, Dalarna County, Sweden, with 5,278 inhabitants in 2005. It is located in the northern part of lake Siljan, about 15 kilometers north of the town Mora...

, Dalarna

Dalarna

', English exonym: Dalecarlia, is a historical province or landskap in central Sweden. Another English language form established in literature is the Dales. Places involving the element Dalecarlia exist in the United States....

, Zetterstéen began his studies at Uppsala University

Uppsala University

Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...

 in 1884, became a Ph.D. and docent

Docent

Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor . Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach...

 of Semitic languages

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

 in 1895. He was acting professor of Oriental languages at Lund University

Lund University

Lund University , located in the city of Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, is one of northern Europe's most prestigious universities and one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, frequently ranked among the world's top 100 universities...

 1895-1904 and professor of Semitic languages in Uppsala from 1904. He also studied under Eduard Sachau

Eduard Sachau

Karl Eduard Sachau was a German orientalist.-Biography:Sachau became professor extraordinary 1869 and full professor 1872 at the University of Vienna, and in 1876, professor at the University of Berlin, where he was appointed director of the new Seminar of Oriental languages in 1887. He travelled...

 at the University of Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

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As a semitist, Zetterstéen was foremost an Arabic philologist, but he was also well-oriented in non-Semitic languages such as Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

 and Nubian

Old Nubian language

Old Nubian is an ancient variety of Nubian, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century . It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and related to other Nubian languages such as Dongolawi. It was used throughout the medieval Christian kingdom of Makuria and its satellite Nobadia...

. Beside a large number of text editions and studies, he published a Swedish translation of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

, a number of popular works, and wrote several articles in the Nordisk familjebok

Nordisk familjebok

Nordisk familjebok is a Swedish encyclopedia, published between 1876 and 1957.- History :The first edition was published in 20 volumes between 1876 and 1899. The first edition is known as the "Iðunn edition" because of the picture of Iðunn on the cover...

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