Albert Kazimirski de Biberstein

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bust of Kazimirski Biberstein in the Montrouge cemetery

Albert Félix Ignace Kazimirski de Biberstein , also Albin de Biberstein or Wojciech Kazimirski-Biberstein (born November 20, 1808 in Korchów Pierwszy near Lublin , † June 22, 1887 in Paris ) was a French orientalist and Arabist of Polish origin. He is the author of a French-Arabic dictionary and a French translation of the Koran .

Life

First page of Kazimirski's Quran translation

Kazimirski-Biberstein comes from the German Bieberstein family , a branch of which settled in Poland, from which the Kazimirskis descended. The family was Catholic Orthodox .

He studied oriental languages at the University of Warsaw and the University of Berlin . He took part in the November uprising of 1830 against the Russian Tsar Nicholas I and, after the defeat of the Polish army in September 1831, went into exile in France, where he became friends with the historian Joachim Lelewel . In 1834 he founded the Slavic League ( Towarzystwo słowiańskie ) in Paris together with Adam Mickiewicz and Józef Bohdan Zaleski . During this time he wrote a Polish-French dictionary.

He then became a dragoman , interpreter of the French ambassadors at the Sublime Porte , and attaché to the French mission in Persia .

After he was commissioned to revise the French translation of the Koran by Claude-Étienne Savary from 1783, he created his own translation, which was first published in 1840. He relied on the preliminary work of the Italian clergyman Ludovico Marracci and the English orientalist George Sale (1697–1736). He died in 1887 and was buried in the Montrouge cemetery.

Works

  • French translation of the Koran. Charpentier, Paris 1840, 1841, 1844. New editions: Flammarion 1970, with a foreword by Mohammed Arkoun ; Jean de Bonnot, 1993; Points, 2010.
  • Dictionnaire arabe-français 2 volumes. Maisonneuve et Cie, Paris 1860. New editions: Editions du Liban, Beirut 1944, and Albouraq, Beirut 2005.
  • Dialogues français-persans: précédés d'un précis de la grammaire persane et suivis d'un vocabulaire français-persan .
  • Enis el-Djelis or Histoire de la belle Persane. A thousand and one nights , translated from Arabic into French and annotated by Albert de Biberstein Kazimirski.

Web links

Commons : Albin de Kazimirski Biberstein  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Kazimirski de Biberstein, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kazimirski de Biberstein, Albert Félix Ignace (full name); Biberstein, Albin de; Kazimirski-Biberstein, Wojciech
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French orientalist and Arabist of Polish origin
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1808
PLACE OF BIRTH Korchów Pierwszy near Lublin
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1887
Place of death Paris