Edward Granville Browne

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Edward Granville Browne FBA (7 February 1862 – 5 January 1926) was a British expert on Iran, known for his books on Persian history and literature.

Browne was born in Gloucestershire, England, the son of a civil engineer. He studied at several schools and colleges, eventually reading natural sciences at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He learned Arabic, Persian, and Turkish from noted scholars, and after graduating in 1882 he traveled to Constantinople. He spent more time at Cambridge studying Indian languages and earned a medical degree in London. In 1887 he became a Fellow of Pembroke College and visited Iran. He later returned to Cambridge to teach Persian and, in 1902, was elected Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic.

At Cambridge Browne helped create a school for living Asian languages to train civil servants for roles in the region. He received a Festschrift on his sixtieth birthday and was an early trustee of the Gibb Memorial, which published the Gibb Memorial Series.

In 1885 in London, Browne met Haji Pirzadeh Naeini, a Persian intellect and traveler. This friendship broadened his knowledge of Persian history and culture. Browne even wore Naeini’s garb in meetings with Persians and used titles from that circle in his writings. This relationship also helped him obtain a consul post in Tehran, which led to his book A Year Amongst The Persians (1893).

Browne married Alice Caroline Daniell in 1906, and they had two sons, including the judge Sir Patrick Browne. He died in 1926 in Cambridge.

Browne wrote about areas few Western scholars had studied, especially Iran and Persian literature. He documented Bábí history through the work of Arthur de Gobineau, translating and writing about early Bábí and Bahá’í history. He was not a Bahá’í, but an Orientalist who explored these topics with sympathy and curiosity. He translated A Traveller’s Narrative by Abdu'l-Bahá and added a substantial introduction and notes.

One of his major works is A Literary History of Persia, whose first volume appeared in 1902 and which was continued in 1906, 1920, and 1924; it remains an important reference. In Iran, he is still remembered today, with a street and a statue in his honor in Tehran.