Thomas Patrick Hughes

Born in Shropshire in 1838, Thomas Patrick Hughes was educated at Ludlow Grammar School and later trained at the Church Missionary Society College in Islington. He was ordained in 1864 and soon left for British India with his wife, Eliza Lloyd.

Hughes spent about 20 years in Peshawar, on what was then the Afghan frontier. He became known for his gift for languages, his close study of Islam, and his work as a missionary-scholar. Among his best-known books are Notes on Muhammadanism, A Dictionary of Islam, Ruhainah, and Twenty Years on the Afghan Frontier.

His writing is valuable not only for its religious perspective, but also for the window it gives into 19th-century South Asia and the meeting of cultures on the frontier. Even now, he is remembered mainly for combining lived experience with careful reference work in books that reached far beyond his mission field.