Simon Ockley (1678 – August 9, 1720), was a British Orientalist.
Biography
Ockley was born at Exeter. He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1697, MA. in 1701, and B.D. in 1710; he became fellow of Jesus College and vicar of Swavesey, and in 1711 was chosen Arabic professor of the university. He had a large family, and his latter days were embittered by pecuniary embarrassments, which form the subject of a chapter in Isaac D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors. The preface to the second volume of his History of the Saracens is dated from Cambridge Castle, where he lay a prisoner for debt. Ockley maintained that a knowledge of Oriental literature was essential to the proper study of theology, and in the preface to his first book, the Introductio ad linguas orientates (1706), he urges the importance of the study. He died at Swavesey.
Works
- The History of the Saracens, is his main work. It was published in two volumes, 1708-1718, and long enjoyed a great reputation; unfortunately Ockley took as his main authority a MS. in the Bodleian of Pseudo-Al-Waqidi's Futúh al-Shám, which is rather historical romance than history.
- A translation of Leon Modena's History of the Persian Jews throughout the World (1707).
- The Improvement of Human Reason, exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan (1708), an English translation of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, a philosophical fiction work by Ibn Tufayl.
- Translated from Arabic the Second Book of Esdras
- Sentences of Ali son-in-law of Mahomet, and his fourth successor. Translated from an authentick Arabick manuscript in the Bodleian library at Oxford, by Simon Ockley. London, B. Lintot, 1717.
