Edgard Blochet

Edgard Blochet was a French orientalist, translator, bibliographer, art historian, specializing in particular in the history of religions. He was born in Bourges. He graduated in Arabic from the School of Oriental Languages in Paris, then from the École Pratique des Hautes Études where he became an assistant between 1895 and 1901, while part of the manuscripts department of the National Library of France, where he was appointed vice-librarian in 1895. He published a great deal of work on Byzantine, Arabic, and Mongol history, but his specialty was Persian art and religious history. He became the assistant curator in 1929, then curator. He retired in November 1935.