The essays in this book place Salisbury in the context of 19th-century Orientalism, with particular attention to the interconnected growth of Assyriology in Northern Europe and the U.S. Hitherto unheralded, Salisbury emerges as a founding figure in the development of ancient Near Eastern, Arabic, and Sanskrit studies, as well as in the rise of the American liberal arts university.

Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901) graduated from Yale University in 1832 and was appointed Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit there in 1841. His remained the only University Chair of Sanskrit in America till 1854, when a separate ‘Professorship of Sanskrit and kindred languages’ was created, also at Yale. Salisbury also served as the President of the American Oriental Society, and was elected as a member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding member of the German Oriental Society.

This book presents expanded versions of the papers delivered at a symposium held during the 175th anniversary celebration of Yale's 1841 appointment of Edward Elbridge Salisbury as America's first Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit.