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Barthelemy D'herbelot de Molainville

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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BARTHELEMY D HERBELOT DE MOLAINVILLE' (1625-1695), French orientalist, was born on the 14th of December 1625 at Paris. He was educated at the university of Paris, and devoted himself to the study of oriental languages, going to Italy 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), aad Leo 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 150o 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 MSS., 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 the College de France. He died in Paris on the 8th of December 1695. His great work is the Bibliotheque orientale, 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 A. Galland. It is based on the immense Arabic dictionary of Hadji Khalfa, 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 Bibliotheque was reprinted at Maestricht (fol. 1776), and at the Hague (4 vols. 4to, 1777-1799). The latter edition is enriched with the contributions of the Dutch orientalist Schultens, Johann Jakob Reiske (1716-1774), and by a supplement provided by Visdelow and Galland. Herbelot's other works, none of which have been published, comprise an Oriental Anthology, and an Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Latin Dictionary.