Adriaan Reland

Who was Adriaan Reland?

Adriaan Reland was a Dutch scholar, cartographer and philologist.

Reland was the son of Johannes Reland, a Protestant minister, and Aagje Prins in the small North Holland village of De Rijp. Adriaan's brother, Peter, was an influential lawyer in Haarlem. Reeland first studied in Amsterdam and enrolled at University of Utrecht in 1693. After obtaining his PhD in Utrecht, he moved to Leiden where he tutored the son of Hans Willem Bentinck, later the 1st Earl of Portland. The latter invited him to move to England, but Reland declined because of his father's deteriorating health.

Reland was one of the early Orientalists. He was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Harderwijk in 1699. From 1701 onwards he was professor of Oriental languages at the University of Utrecht. In 1713, he also taught Hebrew antiquities. Reland was acclaimed for his painstaking studies of Islam and linguistic research. He traced the eastward extension of Malay-like languages into the western Pacific.

Although he never ventured beyond the borders of the Netherlands, he was also acclaimed as a cartographer