Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville

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Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville (born December 14, 1625 in Paris , † December 8, 1695 ) was a French orientalist .

Life

He was trained at the University of Paris , devoted himself to the study of the oriental languages ​​and after completing his studies traveled to Italy to perfect his language skills in the ports of Italy, which were visited by many travelers from the Orient. In Italy he met the Dutch humanist Holstenius and the Greek theologian and linguist Leo Allacci .

After a year and a half he returned to France, where he entered the service of Fouquet , Louis XIV's finance minister , who paid him a pension of 1,500 livres . After Fouquet was ousted in 1661, he entered the service of the king as secretary and interpreter for oriental languages.

Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville 01.jpg

A few years later he visited Italy again, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II. De 'Medici presented him with a large number of valuable oriental manuscripts and tried to keep him at his court. Herbelot, however, was ordered back to France by Colbert , where he received a pension from the king equal to that which he had lost after Fouquet's disempowerment. In 1692 he became a professor at the Collège Royal , where he held a chair for Syriac. He died in Paris on December 8, 1695.

plant

His great work is the Bibliothèque orientale or Dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde la Connoissance des peuples de l'Orient , on which he had worked almost his entire life and which was completed in 1697 by Antoine Galland . The work is based on the Arabic bibliography Kashf al-Zunun by Hadji Khalfa ( Katip Çelebi ), ie it is largely an edited translation of the Arabic text, but also uses a large number of other Arabic and Turkish sources. The Bibliothèque was reissued in Maastricht (fol. 1776) and in The Hague (4 vols., Quarto, 1777–1799). A popularized edition in 6 octave volumes was published in Paris in 1781–83. Of the four editions, the "best" is the four-volume 4th edition in quarto format , published in The Hague. A German translation was published under the title Orientalische Bibliothek or Universal vocabulary, which contains everything that is necessary to know the Orient ( Halle : Johann Jacob Gebauer , 1785–90, four volumes).

literature

  • Jean Gaulmier : À la découverte du proche-Orient. Barthélemy d'Herbelot et sa Bibliothèque orientale. In: Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg. Vol. 48, 1969, ISSN  0151-1971 , pp. 1-6.
  • Henry Laurens: La Bibliothèque orientale de Barthélemi d'Herbelot. Aux sources de l'orientalisme (= Publications du Département d'Islamologie de l'Université de Paris Sorbonne. 6). Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris 1978, ISBN 2-7068-0660-5 .
  • Dominique Torabi: La Perse de Barthélemy d'Herbelot. In: Luqman. Vol. 8, No. 2, 1992, ISSN  0259-904X , pp. 43-58.
  • Nicholas Dew: The order of Oriental knowledge: The making of d'Herbelot's Bibliothèque Orientale. In: Christopher Prendergast (Ed.): Debating World Literature. Verso, London et al. 2004, ISBN 1-85984-458-8 , pp. 233-252.