Call for a Biography

In 1983 Victor Winstone, the noted writer on the Middle East and member of the Royal Geographic Society, delivered a paper entitled ‘George Strachan, 17th Century Orientalist’ at a seminar for Arabian Studies held in London. He subtitled his paper ‘Plea for a Biographical Study’ (Winstone 1984: 103–9). A noted biographer himself, Winstone described Strachan as one of the greatest oriental scholars of his time. Although there had been some investigation into the life of Strachan, notably that by Giorgio Levi Dellavida, professor of Semitic languages in Rome (Dellavida 1956), and an early paper by Fr David McRoberts (McRoberts 1952: 110–28) it surprised Winstone that historians had still to conduct a full study of such a deserving subject. He felt that the omission was in large part due to the fact that Strachan had left no record of his travels and, as an earlier researcher had written, ‘his footsteps [could be] tracked piecemeal, only as the palaeontologist makes out the intermittent traces of an extinct wader or batrachians upon the petrified mud of the Eocene’ (Yule 1888: 312).

Research into oriental studies has grown greatly since the work of Johann Fück (Fück 1955) and in the twenty-first century numerous scholars have added substantially to the body of work through such noted series as The History of Oriental Studies, published in Leiden, but there has still been no new biography of Strachan. The late Professor Bosworth included a chapter, ten pages long, summarising the most prominent facts known of Strachan's life and work (Bosworth 2012). In the period since Winstone made his plea, however, some further evidence of Strachan's life has come to light, but most of what is known derives from accounts given by others who crossed the Scotsman's path. Even with this additional knowledge it is still impossible to provide the full biographical account that Winstone felt was justified. Nevertheless, a more rounded picture is emerging of this remarkable man.

George Strachan was a humanist scholar and a member of the European-wide Republic of Letters during a period when academic institutions were experiencing significant growth and intellectual dispute was intense on both religious and philosophical grounds.