Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
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Syriac and Arabic scholar. Born in north India, he was educated at St.
Andrews University (Scotland), and subsequently studied at Halle with Emil
Rödiger, and at Leiden with R. Dozy. He was appointed Professor of Arabic at
University College, London in 1885, moving the next year to a similar chair
at Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained till 1861, when he was
appointed to a post in the British Museum, in order to catalogue the large
collection of Syriac mss. acquired from
Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum
acquired since the year 1838 (3 vols.; 1870–2), followed (after his
death) by A Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts preserved
in the Library of the University of Cambridge (2 vols.; 1901), he
edited a large number of important Syriac texts, including Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of the New Testament
(1865),
Journal of Sacred Literature.
His A Short History of Syriac Literature, which
appeared posthumously (1894; repr. 2001), remains useful for lesser known
authors, though it is now outdated for many major ones.