Edward Denison Ross

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir E. Denison Ross ( John Lavery , 1922)

Sir Edward Denison Ross (born June 6, 1871 in London , † September 23, 1940 in Istanbul ) was a British orientalist and linguist .

life and work

Origin and education

E. Denison Ross came from a pastor's family. After studying at the University College London and in Paris Ross received his doctorate in 1895 with a thesis on the founder of the Safavidendynastie of Iran , Shah Ismail I , for Dr. phil. at the University of Strasbourg and in 1896 became professor of Persian at University College in London, from where he made extensive trips through Central Asia and Persia.

1901–1914 India

In 1901 Ross followed an appointment as Principal (Director) of the Madrasah Muslim College in the then capital of British India , Calcutta ( Kolkata ), where he got to know the perspective of the Muslims of India in close contact and exchange with Muslim teachers.

1911 Ross also took over the post of a high official in the Ministry of Education ( Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education ). In this capacity he prepared u. a. the indexing of the important Persian and Arabic manuscript holdings in the Khuda Bakhsh library in Patna . At the Government of India he also kept official government records as an Officer in Charge of Records . Ross was a Fellow of Calcutta University and an active member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and did not limit himself to studying Islam, but gradually acquired knowledge of Sanskrit , Chinese and Tibetan. In recognition of his services, Ross was named Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in 1912 .

Denison Ross and Lama Lobzang studying Tibetan, probably Darjeeling, around 1907

1914-1939 London

In 1914 Ross returned to England and became First Assistant at the British Museum , where he cataloged the collections of the Austro-British Asian researcher Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1942), which were mainly from Central Asia . During the First World War Ross worked for the censorship authority and the military intelligence service, where he worked out dictionaries in about twenty different languages ​​for the purpose of postal censorship.

In 1916, Ross became the first director of the newly founded School of Oriental Studies at the University of London (since 1938 School of Oriental and African Studies , abbreviated SOAS) because of his unusually broad language skills as well as his teaching and organizational talent - a post he held until 1937 filled out; at the same time he teaches there as a professor of Persian . Because of his merits, he was beaten in 1918 to Knight Bachelor ("Sir").

Together with the historian Eileen Power (1889-1940) Ross published the book series The Broadway Travelers since 1926 , which made early European travelogues available in annotated editions to a wider audience in English translation and to which he also contributed his own work. In the last years of his life he made numerous lecture and congress trips, including twice to the United States.

1939–1940 Istanbul

During the Second World War , Ross was again active in the intelligence service - from 1939 as head of the British Information Office in Istanbul - where he died in 1940 (just a few months after his wife). His grave is in Haidar Pasha Cemetery, Istanbul

Personality, marriage

Ross is said to have mastered 49 languages, 30 of which as an active speaker.

Since 1904 he was married to (Lady) Dora Robinson (1869 - April 16, 1940). The marriage remained childless. Dora Ross was from Hull and was an excellent pianist; the wedding itself took place during a vacation in Venice. Ross shared a love of music with his wife.

Ross was seen as a personality of "exuberant presence", "enormous joie de vivre" and with the "ability to work hard", who made the SOAS institution he headed into one of the leading Asian science teaching and training institutions with rapid growth in personnel and space

Works

literature

  • RM Chopra: Sir Edward Dennison Ross (1871-1940). A Persian Scholar and Orientalist par excellence . In: Indo-Iranica Volume 66 (March – Dec. 2013) - Special issue: The contributions of European scholars to Persian studies in India . 189 pages, 69 pages numbered differently. Iran Society, Kolkata 2015.
  • Christine Woodhead: Ross, Sir (Edward) Denison . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Volume 47 (2004), pp. 806-807

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foreword to his dissertation 1896; Woodhead p. 806
  2. ^ E. Denison Ross: The early years of Shāh Ismā'īl, founder of the Safavī dynasty . 92 p. Strasbourg: Univ.Diss 1896 / Cambridge: University Press 1896
  3. ↑ The Madrasah Muslim College , also known as Mohammedan College, was founded in 1780 by Warren Hastings and had forty teachers and nearly a thousand students from all age groups by 1910 ( date of foundation according to the Aliah University website ). In the Arab department, Muslims received their traditional theological training from mullahs , mainly by memorizing Arabic-language texts, while in the Anglo-Persian department they taught in English and an Indianized Persian until they reached university entrance (Ross, Burning, pp. 97-100) . In 2007-08 the college was upgraded to Aliah University by decision of the Bengal government .
  4. ↑ Woodhead p. 807
  5. ↑ Woodhead p. 807
  6. ^ Tomb of Dora and Sir Denison Ross, with Dora Ross's death date
  7. ↑ according to the National Portrait Gallery
  8. ^ Dora Ross' life data
  9. ↑ Both ends of the candle, p. 154 f.
  10. ↑ Woodhead p. 807
  11. ↑ In the original exuberant presence ... immense zest for living ... capacity for hard work ; from the foreword by Laurence Binyon ; Both ends of the candle , p. 11
  12. ↑ Woodhead p. 807
personal data
SURNAME Ross, Edward Denison
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ross, Denison; Ross, E. Denison
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1940
Place of death Istanbul