Tritton was born on 25 February 1881. His father was the senior
pastor of a
Congregational church in
Great Yarmouth, but when Tritton was still young the family moved to
Wandsworth. In 1900, he was admitted to
Mansfield College, Oxford, where he studied
theology. He later also studied briefly under
Julius Wellhausen at the
University of Göttingen. He taught at the
Friends' Mission School in
Brummana in
Lebanon, and then at the universities of
Edinburgh and
Glasgow. He received his
D. Litt. from Edinburgh in 1918. In 1921, he was appointed Professor of Arabic at
Aligarh University in
India, where he remained for the rest of the decade. In 1931, he was made Lecturer in Arabic at the
School of Oriental Studies. Two years later, he was promoted to Reader, and in 1938 he succeeded
H. A. R. Gibb as Professor of Arabic and Head of Department. In 1943, his popular introduction to the
Arabic language was published in the
Teach Yourself series. He retired in 1946, but continued to teach for a time as a part-time lecturer. He died on 8 November 1973, at the age of ninety-two. ==Published works==