Edward Henry Palmer
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [1]
an English Orientalist, was born at Cambridge, August 7, 1840. In 1868 he took part in the expedition for exploring the Sinai territory, and made an examination of the names of places, traditions, and antiquities of Arabia Petraea. With the same object in view he explored, in connection with Tyrwhitt Drake, the desert Et-Tih and Moab, in 1869 and 1870. Upon his return to England he was made professor of Arabic at Cambridge in 1871. In 1878 he settled at London, and in 1882 went on a secret mission, at the instance of the English government, into the desert east of the Suez canal. On his second trip through the desert he was killed, in October, 1882. Palmer published an Arabic translation of Thomas Moore's Paradise and the Peri (1865): — Oriental Mysticism (1867): — Report on the Bedawizn of Sinai and their Traditions (1870): — The Desert of the Exodus (1871): — A History of the Jewish Nation (1874; Germ. transl. Gotha, 1876): — A Grammar of the Arabic Language (London, 1874): — A Persian-English Dictionary (1876): — Life of Haroun Al Raschid (1878), and for Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East he translated the Koran. See Besant, Life and Achievements of Edward Henry Palmer (London, 1883). (B.P.)
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [2]
Oriental scholar, born at Cambridge; had an aptitude for languages, and was especially proficient in those of the East; by his knowledge of Arabic contributed to the success of exploring expeditions to S. Palestine and Sinai; was appointed professor of Arabic at Cambridge in 1871; produced a Persian-English Dictionary, an Arabic Grammar, and a translation of the Korân, and in 1882 undertook two missions to Egypt, in the latter of which he and his party were betrayed and murdered; he was a man of varied gifts and accomplishments, and the loss in scholarship to his country by his fate is incalculable (1840-1882).
