Friedrich Carl Andreas (14 April 1846 in Batavia – 4 October 1930 in Göttingen) was an orientalist of German, Malay and Armenian parentage (descendant of the Bagratuni or Bagratid royal family (Armenian: ??????????).
Following graduation, he continued his research of Pahlavi in Copenhagen.
From 1875 he spent several years conducting field studies in Persia and India, during which time, he also worked as a postmaster.From 1883 to 1903 he gave private lessons in Turkish and Iranian in Berlin, and afterwards became a professor of Iranian philology at the University of Göttingen.
Here, he was tasked with deciphering manuscript fragments that were collected by the German Turfan expeditions in western China.Not a prolific author of books, he preferred to share his knowledge with students and colleagues orally.
His primary focus were the Iranian languages in their development from antiquity to the present; e.g.
Afghan, Balochi, Ossetian and Kurdish languages.
He was also thoroughly familiar with Sanskrit, Hindustani, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Armenian and Turkish.
In addition, he was considered an excellent decipherer of manuscripts and inscriptions.