Anthony Ashley Bevan

Anthony Ashley Bevan, FBA (1859–1933) was a British orientalist. He was the son of the banker Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, and his second wife, the translator and poet Frances Bevan. Frances was the author of the famous book Three Friends of God, and Songs of Eternal Life. He was educated at Cheam, Surrey, the Gymnase Littéraire in Lausanne, and at the University of Strasbourg (Strassburg), where he studied under Theodor Noeldeke, a scholar in the field of oriental studies. His relationship with Nöldeke lasted to the end of his life as he kept up a pretty regular correspondence with him covering about half a century. He said in his introduction to the third volume of Al-Mufaddaliyat, in 1924: "I desire to express my deep gratitude to Professor Theodor Nöldeke, who from the first had contributed much towards the elucidation of the Arabic text and most kindly answered a large number of questions which I addressed to him with regard to various difficulties". Educated in Lausanne and Strassburg, Bevan had already laid the foundations of his immense Semitic learning when in 1884 he came from Nöldeke to William Wright. Their influence appears in all his work. He had a regular correspondence with Ignaz Goldziher as well for about 30 years i.e. to the end of Goldziher's life. Anthony entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1884, and obtained a first in the Semitic languages tripos of 1887. In 1888 he gained a Tyrwhitt Hebrew scholarship and the Mason prize for biblical Hebrew, and two years later was elected a Fellow and appointed lecturer in oriental languages. In 1893 he became Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, a post previously held by his brother-in-law Ion Keith-Falconer. It had an annual stipend of only £50, but Bevan had ample private means (his father was the head of the banking house which would become Barclays) and was soon dispensed from the one obligation of lecturing formally once a year. The post was abolished after his death. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1916, resigning in 1928.