Arthur Lumley Davids

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Arthur Lumley Davids (born Asher Lumle Davids; 28 August 1811 – 19 July 1832) was an English orientalist and linguist. He was born in Hampshire, the only child of Jewish parents, Sarah Lumley and Jonki Davids. Sent to an Anglican school to prepare for university, he showed great talent from a young age, even giving a chemistry lecture to the whole school. When he was 10, his father died and he moved with his mother to London.

Davids studied many languages, especially Turkish, but also Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, French, Italian and German. He hoped to become a lawyer, but as a Jew he could not enter the bar, so he got involved in the movement for Jewish emancipation and wrote about it in the London Times. He helped start a Society for the Cultivation of Hebrew Literature and in 1830 gave a lecture on the Literature and Philosophy of the Jews.

Davids is best known for his Grammar of the Turkish Language (1832), dedicated to Mahmud II, the Sultan of Turkey. It was the first Turkish grammar published in Europe since 1709. His mother translated it into French in 1836. The book influenced David Urquhart. Davids fell ill on 19 July 1832 and died the same day of cholera, just weeks after his book was published. He is buried in Bury Street, London, and probably belonged to Bevis Marks Synagogue. His mother later remarried London architect Nathaniel Handford.