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Gottlieb Leitner
‐
Educationist and founder of the Orient Institute and Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking
Other names
Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner
Place of birth
Place of death
Bonn, Germany
About
G. W. Leitner was a Jewish educationist. He moved to London in about 1858 having studied Islam in Constantinople. He studied divinity at King's College London and then taught Arabic, Turkish and modern Greek. In 1864 Leitner was appointed Principal of the Government College at Lahore and spent the next fifteen years in India. He helped to raise money to transform the Government College into the Oriental University of the Punjab. He founded a number of schools and societies, established journals in India and wrote several travelogues.
In 1881 Leitner returned to England. In 1883 he established the Oriental Institute in Woking. This teaching institute also contained an Oriental Museum and a notable art collection. In 1896 Leitner began to edit the Asiatic Review from the Institute. In 1889 the Shah Jahan Mosque was established in the Institute, with a bequest from Shah Jahan, the Begum of Bhopal.
History of Indigenous Education in the Panjab since Annexation and in 1882 (Patiala: Languages Dept, Panjab, 1871)
Introduction to a Philosophical Grammar of Arabic (Lahore: Indian Public Opinion, 1871)
Sinin-i-Islam: Being a Sketch of the History and Literature of Muhammadanism, and Their Place in Universal History (Lahore: Indian Public Opinion, 1871–6)
The Theory and Practice of Education, with Special Reference to Education in India (Lahore: n.p., 1871)
Native Self-Government in Matters of Education (London: East India Association, 1875)
A Detailed Analysis of Abdul Ghafur's Dictionary of the Terms Used by Criminal Tribes in the Panjab (Lahore: Punjab Govt Civil Secretariat Press, 1880)
Kafiristan: The Bashgeli Kafirs and Their Language (Lahore: Dilbagroy, 1880)
Indigenous Elements of Self-Government in India, with Special Reference to the Panjab and More Particularly in Matters of Education (London: East India Association, 1884)
On the Sciences of Language and of Ethnography with Special Reference to the Language and Customs of the People of Hunza (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1890)
Dardistan in 1886, 1889, and 1893 (Woking: Oriental University Institute, 1893)
The Hunza and Nagyr Handbook: Being an Introduction to a Knowledge of the Language, Race, and Countries of Hunza, Nagyr, and a Part of Yasin (Woking: Oriental University Institute, 1893)
Dardistan in 1895 (Woking: Oriental University Institute, 1895)
Rubinstein, W. D., ‘Leitner, Gottlieb Wilhelm (1840–1899)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2009) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/51109]
Correspondence with Lord Kimberley, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
