POCOCKE, EDWARD (1604-1691), English Orientalist and biblical scholar, the son of a Berkshire clergyman, was edu cated at the free school of Thame in Oxfordshire and at Corpus Christi college, Oxford of which he became a fellow in 1628. He discovered in a Bodleian ms. the missing Syraic versions of the four New Testament epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude) which were not in the old Syriac canon, and were not contained in European editions of the Peshito. His edition of these was published at Leyden in 1630, when Pococke sailed for Aleppo as chaplain to the English factory. At Aleppo he studied Arabic, and collected many valuable mss. Laud founded an Arabic chair at Oxford, and invited Pococke to fill it. He began to lecture on Aug. I 0, 1636; but next summer sailed again for Constantinople, and remained there for about three years. When he returned to England Laud was in the Tower, but had placed the Arabic chair on a permanent footing. Pococke's rare scholar ship and personal qualities won him influential friends among the opposite party, and through the good offices of John Selden and John Owen he was advanced in 1648 to the chair of Hebrew, though as he could not take the engagement of 1649 he lost the emoluments of the post soon of ter, and did not recover them till the Restoration. During the Commonwealth attempts were made
to deprive him of his living of Childrey. In 1649 he published the Specimen historiae arabum, a short account of the origin and manners of the Arabs, taken from Barhebraeus (Abulfaragius), with notes from a vast number of MS. sources which are still valuable. This was followed in 1655 by the Porta Mosis, ex tracts from the Arabic commentary of Maimonides on the Mishna, with translation and learned notes; and in 1656 by the annals of Eutychius in Arabic and Latin.
After the Restoration Pococke's political and pecuniary troubles were removed, but the reception of his magnum opus—a com plete edition of the Arabic history of Barhebraeus (Greg. Abul faragii historic compendiosa dynastiarurn), which he dedicated to the king in 1663—showed that the new order of things was not very favourable to profound scholarship. After this his most important works were a Lexicon lieptaglotton (1669) and English commentaries on Micah (1677), Malachi (1677), Hosea (1685) and Joel (1691), which are still worth reading.