Life

Barker was born about 1810, at which time John Barker

John Barker (diplomat)

John Barker was an English diplomat and horticulturist.-Diplomatic career:Born in Smyrna on 9 March 1771, Barker was educated in England...

, his father, was consul at Aleppo

Aleppo

Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...

. From both his parents he inherited a singular linguistic aptitude. He was the godson of John Louis Burckhardt, who, about the time of his birth, was for several months the guest of his father. He was brought to England in 1819, and educated there. From his early boyhood he prosecuted the study of oriental languages, and became at length as familiar with Arabic, Turkish, and Persian as he was with the chief languages of Europe. After his return to Syria Barker undertook a journey to the scarcely known sources of the Orontes, no account of which, until the communication of his ‘Notes’ to the Geographical Society of London in 1836, had ever been published.

Barker returned on 22 August 1835, to his father's residence at Suediah, near the mouth of the Orontes, and during part of the succeeding winter played chess almost every evening with Ibrahim Pasha

Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt

Ibrahim Pasha was the eldest son of Muhammad Ali, the Wāli and unrecognised Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. He served as a general in the Egyptian army that his father established during his reign, taking his first command of Egyptian forces was when he was merely a teenager...

, then governor of Syria and resident at Antioch

Antioch

Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the...

. Barker was for ‘many years resident at Tarsus

Tarsus, Mersin

Tarsus is a historic city in south-central Turkey, 20 km inland from the Mediterranean Sea. It is part of the Adana-Mersin Metropolitan Area, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Turkey with a population of 2.75 million...

 in an official capacity’—in the list of members of the Syro-Egyptian Society of London for 1847–8 he is designated, probably by mistake, as ‘H.B.M. Consul, Tarsus’.

Barker was for some time professor of the Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Hindustani languages at Eton College

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

, and he dedicated his Turkish grammar to Dr. Hawtrey, the provost. In the course of the Crimean war

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

 Barker placed his knowledge of the oriental languages and character at the disposal of the British government, in whose service he died on 28 January 1856, ‘of cholera, at Sinope, on the Black Sea, aged 45’, whilst employed as chief superintendent of the land transport depôt at that place.

Works

He accumulated materials for his major work Lares and Penates (1853), which was edited by William Francis Ainsworth

William Francis Ainsworth

William Francis Ainsworth was an English surgeon, traveller, geographer and geologist, known also as a writer and editor.-Life:Ainsworth was born on 9 November 1807 at Exeter, the son of John Ainsworth of Rostherne in Cheshire, captain in the 15th and 128th regiments...

. Before this Barker had produced a polyglot volume entitled ‘Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations. The Speech of His Royal Highness Prince Albert translated into the principal European and Oriental Languages,’ London, 1851. Other works were:

• ‘Turkish Tales in English;’
• ‘A Practical Grammar of the Turkish Language; with Dialogues and Vocabulary,’ London, 1854;
• ‘A Reading Book of the Turkish Language, with Grammar and Vocabulary,’ London, 1854;
• ‘Baitál Pachísí; or, Twenty-five Tales of a Demon; a new edition of the Hindí Text, with each Word expressed in the Hindústání Character immediately under the corresponding word in Nágarí, and with a perfectly literal English interlinear translation, accompanied by a free translation in English at the foot of each page, and explanatory notes,’ Hertford, 1855. This work was edited by Edward Backhouse Eastwick
  Edward Backhouse Eastwick
  Edward Backhouse Eastwick CB was a British orientalist, diplomat and Conservative Member of Parliament....
  
  , to whom it was dedicated.
• ‘Odessa and its Inhabitants, by an English Prisoner in Russia,’ London, 1855;
• ‘A short Historical Account of the Crimea, from the Earliest Ages and during the Russian Occupation,’ Hertford and London, the Preface of which is dated from ‘Constantinople, 12 March, 1855.’