For the most important historical records that have come to us in recent decades we have to thank the Orientalist, though the classical explorer has been by no means idle.
De Sacy had successively acquired all the Semitic languages, and as a civil servant he found time to make himself a great name as an orientalist.
Darby in the following year; and Ahmad ibn Mohammed ibn Abdallah, al Dimashki, al `Ajmi, commonly called Ibn 'Arabshah, author of the Arabic `Ajaibu '1 Makhlnkat, translated by the Dutch Orientalist Golius in 1636.
In consequence of prophesying the death of the king and the end of the monarchy, he was arrested for treason in 1 795, and confined as a criminal lunatic. His case was, however, brought before parliament by his ardent disciple, Nathaniel Halhed, the orientalist, a member of the House of Commons, and he was removed to a private asylum in Islington.
Akerblad, a Swedish orientalist attached to the embassy in Paris, identified the proper names of persons which occurred in the demotic text, being guided to them by the position of their equivalents in the Greek.