Edward Pocock, an English orientalist, born in Oxford, Nov. 8, 1604, died there, Sept. 10, 1691. He graduated at Oxford in 1622, studied the oriental languages, and prepared an edition in Syriac of the second epistle of St. Peter, the second and third of St. John, and that of St. Jude, parts of the Syriac New Testament which had not previously been edited. He was ordained priest in 1628, and went as chaplain of the English merchants in Aleppo, where he remained five or six years, studying Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic. Returning in 1636, he was appointed to the Arabic professorship in Oxford, founded by Laud, by whom he had been commissioned while in the East to procure ancient coins and manuscripts for the university. He went again to the East, remained at Constantinople nearly four years, and came home in 1640. Resuming his lectures and studies at the university, he was presented in 1643 to the rectory of Childrey in Berkshire. Charles I., while a prisoner in the isle of Wight in 1648, nominated him professor of Hebrew with a canonry of Christ Church added.

In 1648-50 he published Specimen Historice Arabum, consisting of extracts from Abulfaragius in the Arabic with a Latin translation and notes appended; and in 1655 appeared at Oxford his Porta Mosis, consisting of six prefatory discourses to the commentaries of Moses Maimonides upon the Mishnah. He assisted in the preparation of "Walton's polyglot Bible, which appeared in 1657; and in 1658 he published at Oxford, in 2 vols. 4to, his Latin translation of the "Annals" of Eutychius. Soon after the restoration he published an Arabic version of Grotius's tract De Veritate, and an Arabic poem of Abu Is-mael Thograi with a Latin translation and notes. His chief work was the translation of the Historia Dynastiarum of Abulfaragius, with the text and notes (2 vols. 4to, Oxford, 1663). He also published an Arabic version of the church catechism and liturgy (1674), "Commentary upon the Prophecies of Mi-cah and Malachi" (1677), on Hosea (1685), and on Joel (1691). An edition of his theological writings, with an account of his life and works by Leonard Twells, M. A., was published in 1740, in 2 vols. fol. - His son Edward published in 1671, under his father's direction, the philosophical treatise of Ibn To-phail, with a Latin version and notes, afterward translated into English by Ockley. He also translated into Latin the work of Abdal-latif on Egypt, but it was not published till 1800. Another son, Thomas, made an English translation of the work of Menasseh ben Israel, De Termino Vital (" Of the Term of Life," 12mo, London, 1699).