Robert Bertram Serjeant (23 March 1915 – 29 April 1993) was a British scholar, traveller, and one of the leading Arabists of his generation. He was born and raised in Edinburgh and studied at the University of Edinburgh under the Quranic scholar Richard Bell. He received his MA in 1935, and moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge, completing his PhD dissertation on Islamic textiles under the supervision of Professor C.A. Storey. He won a scholarship to work at SOAS with Professor A. S. Tritton. In 1940, he was working in Aden, but with the Second World War in progress, he was commissioned into the Aden Government Guards, spending his time in the Subayhi country of southern Arabia.