SALE, GEOWIE, an eminent oriental scholar, was b. toward the end of the 17th e., and died at Loudon in 1736 under 40 years of age. Almost nothing is known Of his private life. He is supposed to have been born in Kent; and he received his education at the King's college, Canterbury. Brought up to the law, he is believed to have prac ticed it almost to the end of his life. That he spent years in Arabia, as Voltaire and many after him asserted, is a complete fiction. He assisted in getting up the Universal II/story—together with Swinton, Shelvocke, Campbell, George Psalmanazar, and A. Bower, each remarkable enough in his way—for which lie wrote the cosmogony and several portions of oriental history. He was also one authors of the General Dictionary; hut lie is best known by his unrivaled translation of the Koran, "with explanatory notes taken from the most approved commentators, to which is prefixed a preliminary discourse" (1734). This discourse." which is of great value, and proves Sale to have been deeply versed in oriental literature, treats, among other things, " of the Arabs before Mohammed, or, as they express it, hi the '• time of igno rance"—thsir history, religion, learning, and customs; of the state of Christianity, par-.
ticula•ly of the eastern churches, and of Judaism, at the time of Mohammed's appear ance; and of the methods taken by him for establishing his religion, and the circum stances which concurred thereto; of the doctrines, precepts, and peculiaiities of • the Koran, Aid of the principal Mohammedan sects." Sale's work was translated into French by Duryer (Antw. 2 vols. 1770). This translation formed a new epoch in the, study of Islam and its literature; and though many other translations have been attempted since. in nearly all European and oriental languages, it still bears the palm. See KOH AN. That his contemporaries fastened the charge of heresy upon one who spoke philosop!iieally and humanely of other creeds, is not to be wondered at. After his death, a catalogue of his oriental MSS. was published, and the contents are now in the Rad cliffe library, Oxford.