Hieronymus Harder (orientalist)

Hieronymus Harder (* 1648 in Basel , † March 1675 in Constantinople ) was a Swiss orientalist .

biography

Harder was the son of the Basel university notary and town clerk Johann Conrad Harder (1628–1695) and Anna-Maria Gemusaeus (1626–1671). In 1664 he completed a first degree in philosophy in Basel with the treatise On the Seat of the Rational Soul . He was likely to have received his further and above all his orientalist training in Leiden , the then center of oriental studies in Europe. There he received his doctorate in 1668 at the theological faculty. In the same year two disputations by him appeared, a treatise on Jacob's farewell speech in the Book of Genesis and a work on the theology of Noah . In his estate, there are also copies of Leiden's Arabic manuscripts that he made himself or had made by a scribe named Ibn al-ṢaṢrī.

Harder was later appointed to Leiden, first as an honorary professor, then as a full professor “in the oriental languages”. Before taking up the position, he traveled to the Orient, but died on the way "of a heated fever".

In 1682 the father donated the oriental manuscripts from his son's possession as well as the rest of the orientalist estate to the Basel university library . In addition to the Basler Koran, which came into the possession of the library in 1559, the manuscripts form the oldest inventory of Basler Orientalia. In addition to copies and translations of Arabic source texts into Latin, Harder's estate includes letters, notes on Koranic and biblical topics, Arabic histories, linguistics, and extensive preparatory work on an Arabic-Turkish dictionary.

Harder's early death prevented the publication of further scientific papers. The last text printed by him is a funeral chant (epicedium) in Persian with Latin translation, which he wrote on the death of his mother in 1671, and which is printed in the appendix to the funeral sermon. The use of specifically Persian imagery makes it clear that Harder had also carefully studied Persian poetry. At the time he was living, the study of Persian was just emerging in Europe: in 1649 John Greaves ʼ Elementa linguae persicae appeared, and in 1654 Adam Olearius had translated a major work of neo-Persian literature - Saʿdīs Gulistān - into German under the title Persianischer Rosenthal .

Fonts

• Disputatio philosophica de sede animae rationalis. Iohannes Iacobus Decker, Basel 1664, doi : 10.3931 / e-rara-66484 (Latin).
• Disputatio theologica de verbis Jacobi ultimis, Genesis 48 et 49 . Joh. Elsevier, Lugduni Batavorum [= Leiden] 1668 (Latin).
• Disputatio theologica de Theologia Noachica . Joh. Elsevier, Lugduni Batavorum [= Leiden] 1668 (Latin).
• Christian funeral sermon, of a believing soul, earthly and heavenly house: held on Tuesdays, September 26th. Anno 1671 in the minster in Basel, at the Christian burial of ... Anna-Maria Gemusaein, of ... Mr. Johann-Conrad Harders, clerk there, conjugal house fraud . Jacob Bertsche, Basel 1671, Epicedium in the appendix, doi : 10.3931 / e-rara-68269 (German, Latin, Persian).

literature

• View of the Orient: From the Oriental Seminar to the Seminar for Middle East Studies at the University of Basel (1919-2019) , edited by Claudia Bolliger, Renate Würsch, Muttenz 2019. p. 181. ISBN 3796540295 . ( Excerpt from Google Books )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Notes on the Harder family . fol. 3r ( catalog entry from Basel University Library ).
2. ^ Gift book from the University Library of Basel, 1682-1762 . fol. 1r , doi : 10.7891 / e-manuscripta-20987 (Latin).