Edward Pococke, 1604-1691: An English Orientalist
As Professor of Arabic at Oxford, writes P.M. Holt, Pococke pursued his scholarly life amid civil war and republican experiment.
On September 10th, 1691, there died in Oxford Dr. Edward Pococke, canon of Christ Church, Regius Professor of Hebrew and first Laudian Professor of Arabic. He was nearly eighty-seven years of age; and his varied and unusual career may be said to epitomize the history of Arabic studies in seventeenth-century England—an aspect of English learning that has received little attention from historians.
Although medieval scholars owed much to Arabic texts in their study of medicine, mathematics, philosophy and the physical sciences, they were not true orientalists. The work of translation was mostly carried out in Spain where, as the Christian Reconquest advanced from the eleventh century onwards, Arabic manuscripts were made available and their translation became possible through the collaboration of Jews and Mozarabs, or Arabic-speaking Christians, with Latin-speaking scholars.
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