Jacobus Golius (Jacob Gool) was born in the Hague, the Netherlands, in 1596 as the son of Dirk Gool, a high-ranking clerk in the bureaucracy of the Dutch Republic. At the age of sixteen he matriculated at Leiden University, studying 'philosophy', i.e. humanities and exact sciences. In 1616 he obtained his degree and withdrew to the estate of his father in Naaldwijk to pursue his studies. In this period of self-study he discovered that he needed to know Arabic in order to gain a wider knowledge of the exact sciences. In 1618 he re-entered the University, this time to study Oriental languages under Thomas Erpenius, professor of Arabic since 1613.

Because of his double competence in geometry and Arabic he was selected in 1622 to join a Dutch diplomatic mission to Morocco, with the aim of finding suitable anchorage facilities for Dutch ships as long as the Republic was at war with Spain. The mission failed, but Golius was given an opportunity to establish contacts with local scholars and to acquire (copies of) Arabic manuscripts. Golius returned in July 1624, only to bury his professor Erpenius later that year.

Golius was appointed professor of Arabic in May 1625, but a few months later he secured permission from the University to travel to the Middle East in the retinue of Cornelis Witsen, consul of the Dutch Republic at Aleppo, whom he served as secretary. In 1627, when Witsen returned to the Netherlands, Golius travelled onwards to Istanbul, where he found employment with, and hospitality from, Cornelis Haga, the first 'orator' or ambassador of the Dutch Republic to the Ottoman Empire.

In 1629 Golius returned home, taking up his duties as professor of Arabic and receiving a second appointment as professor of mathematics. During his professorship he re-edited grammatical works by his predecessor Erpenius and produced a text edition of the Life of Timur Lenk by Ibn ʿArabshāh (1389-1450), Vitae et rerum gestarum Timuri qui vulgo Tamerlanes dicitur historia (Leiden, 1636). His main achievement, however, is his Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, published in 1653, a dictionary that remained indispensible to European Orientalists for almost two centuries (see Vrolijk 2009).

Golius was an Arabist of singular standing, who attracted many students from abroad. On his death in 1667, however, no suitable candidate was found to succeed him, thus putting an end to the ascendancy of Arabic studies in the Dutch Republic. Only later, in the 18th century, they were revived by Albert Schultens (1686-1750).

One of his more famous students was Levinus Warner (1617 or 18 – 1665), who served as resident of the Dutch Republic in Istanbul in the mid-seventeenth century and who left a collection of c. 1000 Middle Eastern manuscripts to Leiden University on his death in 1665. Golius knew about the legacy, but he never witnessed the arrival of this important collection. For details on Golius' life and work see Juynboll 1931. His portrait is in the collection of the Academisch Historisch Museum of Leiden University (Icones 81).