Julius von Mohl, German Orientalist, brother of Hugo von Mohl and Robert von Mohl was born at Stuttgart. He abandoned the idea of entering the Lutheran ministry, and in 1823 went to Paris, at that time, under Silvestre de Sacy, the great European school of Eastern letters. From 1826 to 1833 he was nominally professor at Tübingen, but had permission to continue his studies abroad, and passed some years in London and Oxford. In 1826 he was charged by the French government with the preparation of an edition of the Shah Nama (Livre des rois), the first volume of which appeared in 1838, while the seventh and last was left unfinished at his death, being completed by Barbier de Meynard. Discerning this to be his life's work, he resigned his chair at Tübingen in 1834, and settled permanently in Paris. In 1844 he was nominated to the academy of inscriptions, and in 1847 he became professor of Persian at the Collège de France. But his knowledge and interest extended to all departments of Oriental learning. He served for many years as secretary, and then as president of the Société Asiatique. His annual reports on Oriental science, presented to the society from 1840 to 1867, and collected after his death in Paris on 3 January 1876, under the title Vingi-sept ans d'histoire des etudes orientales (Paris, 1879), are an admirable history of the progress of Eastern learning during these years. Concerning the discoveries at Nineveh he wrote Lettres de M. Botta sur les d'Couvertes a Khorsabad (1845). He also published anonymously, in conjunction with Justus Olshausen (1800–1882), Fragments relatifs a la religion de Zoroastre (Paris, 1829); Confucii Chi-king sive liber carminum, ex latina P. Lacharmi interpretatione (Stuttgart, 1830); and an edition of Y-King, Antiquissimus Sinarum liber, ex interpretatione P. Regis (Stuttgart, 1834–1839).
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
