- Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville
Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville (
December 14 ,1625 –December 8 ,1695 ), FrenchOrientalist , was born atParis .He was educated at the
University of Paris , and devoted himself to the study of oriental languages, going toItaly to perfect himself in them by converse with the orientals who frequented its sea-ports. There he also made the acquaintance of Holstenius, the Dutch humanist (1596-1661), andLeo Allatius , the Greek scholar (1586-1669).On his return to France after a year and a half, he was received into the house of Fouquet, superintendent of finance, who gave him a pension of 1500 livres. Losing this on the disgrace of Fouquet in 1661, he was appointed secretary and interpreter of Eastern languages to the king.
A few years later he again visited Italy, when the grand-duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany presented him with a large number of valuable Oriental manuscripts, and tried to attach him to his court. Herbelot, however, was recalled to France by Colbert, and received from the king a pension equal to the one he had lost. In 1692 he succeeded D'Auvergne in the chair of
Syriac , in theCollège de France . He died in Paris on the 8th of December 1695.His great work is the "Bibliothèque orientale [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Idries_Shah#The_Way_of_the_Scholar] , ou dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde la connoissance des peuples de l'Orient", which occupied him nearly all his life, and was completed in 1697 by
Antoine Galland . It is based on the immense Arabic bibliography (the "Kashf al-Zunun") ofHadji Khalfa (Katip Çelebi ), of which indeed it is largely an abridged translation, but it also contains the substance of a vast number of other Arabic and Turkish compilations and manuscripts. The "Bibliothèque" was reprinted atMaastricht (fol. 1776), and atThe Hague (4 vols quarto, 1777-1799). A popularising version was also issued in 6 vols octavo (Paris, 1781-83). Of the four editions, the "best" edition is the 4 vol quarto edition of The Hague.The latter edition is enriched with the contributions of the Dutch orientalist Schultens,
Johann Jakob Reiske (1716-1774), and by a supplement provided byVisdelou and Antoine Galland. Herbelot's other works, none of which have been published, comprise an "Oriental Anthology", and an "Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Latin Dictionary".ee also
*
Sufi studies
*François Pétis de la Croix References
*1911
*Laurens, Henry. "Aux sources de l'orientalisme: la" Bibliothèque Orientale "de Barthélemi d'Herbelot". Publications du département d'Islamologie de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), 6. (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1978). 102 pp.
*Gaulmier, Jean. "A la découverte du proche-Orient: Barthélemy d'Herbelot et sa Bibliothèque orientale." Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg 48 (1969): 1-6.
*Torabi, Dominique. "La Perse de Barthélemy d'Herbelot." Luqman [Tehran] 8, no. 2 (1992): 43-58.
*Nicholas Dew. "The order of Oriental knowledge: the making of d'Herbelot's" Bibliothèque Orientale. In "Debating World Literature", edited by Christopher Prendergast (London: Verso, 2004), pp. 233-252. ISBN 1859844588
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