Sale, GEORGE

Sale, GEORGE, an eminent oriental scholar, was born in Kent about 1690, educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and bred to the law. He assisted in getting up the Universal History—together with Swinton, Shelvocke, Campbell, George Psalmanazar, and A. Bower—for which he wrote the cosmogony and several portions of oriental history. He was also one of the authors of the General Dictionary; but he is best known by his unrivalled translation of the Koran, 'with explanatory notes taken from the most approved commentators, to which is prefixed a preliminary discourse' (1734). This translation, with its learned preliminary discourse, formed a new epoch in the study of Islam and its literature (see KORAN; and Wherry's Comprehensive Commentary on the Qur'an, comprising Sale's Translation, 1882-86). That his contemporaries fastened the charge of heresy upon one who spoke philosophically and humanely of other creeds is not to be wondered at. He died 14th November 1736. After his death a catalogue of his oriental MSS. was published, and they are now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.