Eduard Glaser

Eduard Glaser (15 March 1855 – 7 May 1908) was an Austrian Arabist and archeologist. He was one of the first Europeans who explored South Arabia. He collected thousands of inscriptions in Yemen that are today held by Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Of all the travellers to the Orient in the 19th century, Eduard Glaser is considered the most important scholar to have ever studied Yemen. He contributed to the advancement of historical and cultural research on this important country, revealed its ancient history and documented its written and oral traditions. Yemen fascinated him, incited his imagination, beginning with his first visit to that country (1882-1884). He returned there on three other occasions (1885-1886, 1887-1888, and 1892-1894). In Yemen, Glaser disguised himself as a Muslim with the assumed name of Faqih Hussein bin Abdallah el Biraki Essajah, meaning, "the scholar Hussein bin Abdallah from Prague."

Eduard Glaser was born in the Bohemian town of Deutsch Rust on the 15th of March, 1855, into a Jewish merchant family. He moved to Prague at the age of sixteen. In order to earn his livelihood, he began working as a private tutor in the home of an aristocratic family while, at the same time, he studied mathematics at the Polytechnic in Prague, along with physics, astronomy, geology, geography, geodesy and Arabic which he accomplished in 1875. Certain publications concerning the journeys of Livingstone in Africa in the last quarter of the 19th century inspired within him a similar drive and ambition to set out on a journey in quest of ancient cultures.

In Vienna, Glaser successfully concluded his studies in Arabic and enrolled thereafter in an astronomy class. From 1877 Glaser, served as an assistant in the observatory in Vienna for a period of three years. An important turning point in his academic education came in 1880, when Glaser enrolled in David Heinrich Müller's class for the study of Sabaean grammar. Müller suggested to him that he travel to Yemen, offering him a stipend that was to be provided by the Academy of Sciences of Vienna for the purpose of copying down Sabaean inscriptions. Even though his position in the observatory gave him a sense of financial security, he preferred to resign from that post in 1880 – wishing instead to dedicate the remainder of his life to the study of South Arabia's ancient history (Dostal 1990, p. 17). When it became clear to him that his mission would be delayed on account of technical and personal problems, he resorted to his “French connections.” A scholarship from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris enabled him to travel to Yemen in 1882. The condition of his French sponsors was that they would receive the results of his findings, especially the inscriptions that he'd be so fortunate to have copied down. On the 11th of October 1882, he arrived at the port of Hodeida (Yemen).

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