Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic explained

Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic is a title used at Cambridge University for the holder of a professorship of Arabic; Sir Thomas Adams, 1st Baronet (1586–1668), Lord Mayor of London in 1645, gave to Cambridge University the money needed to create the first Professorship of Arabic.^[1]

The professorship was partly created to propagate the Christian faith "to them who now sit in darkness".^[2]

Sir Thomas Adams's Professors

• Abraham Wheelocke (1632)
• Edmund Castell (1666)
• John Luke (1685)
• Charles Wright (1702–1710)
• Simon Ockley (1711)
• Leonard Chappelow (1720)
• Samuel Hallifax (1768)
• William Craven (1770)
• Joseph Dacre Carlyle (1795)
• John Palmer (1804)
• Samuel Lee (1819)
• Thomas Jarrett (1831)
• Henry Griffin Williams (1854)
• William Wright (1870)
• William Robertson Smith (1889)
• Charles Pierre Henri Rieu (1894)
• Edward Granville Browne (1902)^[3]
• Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1926)
• Charles Ambrose Storey (1933)
• Arthur John Arberry (1947–1969)
• Robert Bertram Serjeant (1970–1982)
• Malcolm Cameron Lyons (1985)
• Tarif Khalidi (1996–2002)
• James Montgomery (2012–)^[4]

See also

• Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic

Notes and References

1. Chalmers, Alexander. The General Biographical Dictionary: Containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the most Eminent Persons in Every Nation; Particularly the British and Irish; from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time. new ed. rev. and enl. London: Nichols [et al.], 1812-1817. 32 vols.
2. Book: Brooke, Christopher. Christopher N. L. Brooke. Oxford and Cambridge. 1988. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge [England]. 0-521-30139-4. 180. Highfield, Roger. Swaan, Wim, photographs by. registration.
3. University intelligence - Cambridge . 30 April 1902 . 11 . 36755.
4. Elections . . 6266 . 16 May 2012 . 5 September 2019.