François Pétis de la Croix (Orientalist, 1622)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

François Pétis de la Croix (* 1622 - † November 4, 1695 in Paris ) was a French orientalist .

Life

François Pétis de la Croix came from an English family. His maternal uncle, Claude Guiclet, was an interpreter of the Turkish language . It was through him that Pétis was induced to devote himself to the study of the oriental languages. In 1652 he became king Louis XIV's secretary and interpreter for the Turkish and Arabic languages . For forty years he performed this office conscientiously.

Pétis demonstrated his language skills in the translation of the Histoire de France into Turkish. He also edited the three volumes of the Voyages au Levant that his friend Jean de Thévenot had left handwritten. On the orders of Minister Colbert, he translated the preface by the Turkish writer Abul-Khair-Tash Kuprizadeh, and the poem contained therein about the life of Genghis Khan . Colbert was extremely pleased with this work. He asked the author to write a detailed history of that conqueror, making use of the finest Oriental and Occidental sources. Pétis worked on this work for ten years. Age and sickness prevented him from completing it. He died on November 4, 1695 at the age of 73 in Paris, one month after the marriage of his son of the same name, François Pétis de la Croix, and was buried in the parish of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie.

The Histoire du grand Genghiz-Can, premier empereur des anciens Mogols et Tartares appeared in Paris in a Duodez volume in 1710 . It was published by Pétis' son, who added a list of the successors of the Mongolian conqueror except Timur and a list of the authors used for this work. An important source was the Persian historian Mīrchānd . The work was thorough and has a concise style. But it contains various errors in proper names and chronology. It would have been desirable for the author to have relegated the geographical descriptions to the notes instead of interrupting the narrative. Pétis is also the author of a Dictionnaire turc-français et français-turc and has compiled the catalog raisonné of all Turkish and Persian manuscripts that were in the royal library in Paris at the time.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pétis de la Croix, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1622
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 1695
Place of death Paris