Edward Pococke
Biography1604 - 1691
About the artist
Edward Pocock, the orientalist, was born in 1604 at Oxford, in a house near the Angel Inn, in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, and there baptised on 8th November 1604. His father, Edward Pocock Senior, matriculated (as 'pleb. fil.' of Hampshire) at Magdalen College in 1585, was demy from 1585 to 1591, held a fellowship from 1591 to 1604, proceeded BA 1588, MA 1592 and then BD 1602. A year later, he was appointed Vicar of Chieveley in Berkshire where the family had lived for at least a hundred years. With his wife, Grace, the sister of Henry Greatham, Edward Senior raised six sons and two daughters. Two other daughters died very young.
Although he thought Islam a false faith, he also wanted to discredit crude polemic, fabrications and folk-lore that misrepresented Islam and Muhammad. He helped to pioneer the use of primary sources as well as field-work in Muslim contexts. His defense of Muslim philosophy as a worthy subject of study prevented him from reducing Islam to legalistic aspects, even though he was disinterested in Islam as a living faith. He tended to approach Islam as he did ancient texts, as of historical rather than contemporary interest. He had relatively few students and since he wrote in Latin his approach did not impact on the public at large. However, he established standards for the academic study of Islam that did much to correct past errors, to making calumny and invention unacceptable. He made a significant contribution to knowledge of Islam's history within the West. Pococke is to be numbered among the founding fathers of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Western academy, along with the men who first occupied the chairs founded at Cambridge (1633), Paris (1535) and Leiden (1613).
Although he thought Islam a false faith, he also wanted to discredit crude polemic, fabrications and folk-lore that misrepresented Islam and Muhammad. He helped to pioneer the use of primary sources as well as field-work in Muslim contexts. His defense of Muslim philosophy as a worthy subject of study prevented him from reducing Islam to legalistic aspects, even though he was disinterested in Islam as a living faith. He tended to approach Islam as he did ancient texts, as of historical rather than contemporary interest. He had relatively few students and since he wrote in Latin his approach did not impact on the public at large. However, he established standards for the academic study of Islam that did much to correct past errors, to making calumny and invention unacceptable. He made a significant contribution to knowledge of Islam's history within the West. Pococke is to be numbered among the founding fathers of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Western academy, along with the men who first occupied the chairs founded at Cambridge (1633), Paris (1535) and Leiden (1613).
