From NPR
BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Elisofon is a photographer, he asked to take a picture of a King of the Congo for Life Magazine. Staples is a curator who created an exhibit with Elisofon. And Stamberg is a NPR correspondent.
QUESTION: The question is simple. For the phrase make a request of in the following quote, I feel very strange. Given the fact that the request(bring out of a mirror) is made by the King of Congo, to the photographer(Elisofon), how about make a request to? That is, Once he was ready, the king made a request to Elisofon. The word Of in the quote makes me feel more like the request is made by the King, not the Elisofon.
QUOTE:
STAPLES: It took him(the King of Congo) three hours to get dressed for the photograph. And the costume, itself, weighs over 300 pounds.
STAMBERG: Once he was ready, the king made a request of Elisofon.
STAPLES: The king wanted a full-length mirror brought out so he could see how he looked. And Elisofon said: The only other time that happened to me was with Ginger Rogers.
Best Answer
Prepositions are confusing, but this particular use has its logic.
You are thinking of the King speaking to the photographer; but this English idiom is driven by the quality of what is said. When you ask for a favour or a gift or make a demand or a request you are asking the other person to give you something, and the idiom employs a preposition which expresses not the direction of the communication but the direction of the giving which is to follow, from the person requested back to the person making the request.
The preposition might have been from, but in English the prepositions of and from have a great deal of overlap, and had even more overlap in the past. Note, for instance, that titles and identifiers which express a person's place of origin use of rather than from: the Duke of York, Auld Wat of Harden, and so forth. Very far back in history we held an election between of and from in this context, and of won.
So in English we do not say made a request to; we say made a request of.