author
Edward Henry Palmer
1840–1882
A gifted linguist and restless traveler, this Victorian scholar moved with unusual ease between Cambridge lecture rooms and the deserts of Sinai. His life joined serious study of Arabic and Persian with dangerous fieldwork that ended in a dramatic early death.
1 Audiobook
Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin
by Walter Besant, Edward Henry Palmer
About the author
Born in Cambridge in 1840, Edward Henry Palmer became known as an English orientalist, explorer, and scholar of Arabic and Persian. He studied at St John's College, Cambridge, later taught there, and eventually served as Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic. Accounts of his life often note his remarkable ear for languages and his ability to adapt quickly to local dialects and customs.
Palmer wrote on language, religion, and travel, and he is especially remembered for works such as The Desert of the Exodus and for translations and studies connected with Arabic and Persian literature. Reference sources also connect him with the Sinai Survey and other journeys in the Middle East, where his field knowledge gave his scholarship an unusual immediacy.
In 1882, during the British campaign in Egypt, he undertook a government mission in the Sinai region and was killed there the same year. That abrupt ending helped make him a memorable Victorian figure: part academic, part adventurer, and part political go-between.