Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville (
December 14, 1625 –
December 8, 1695), French Orientalist, was born 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), and
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 1500 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 manuscripts, 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
Collège de France. He died in Paris on the 8th of December 1695.
His great work is the
Bibliothèque orientale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Idries_Shah#The_Way_of_the_Scholar, 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
Antoine Galland. It is based on the immense Arabic bibliography (the
Kashf al-Zunun) of
Hadji Khalfa (
Katip Çelebi), 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
Bibliothèque was reprinted at
Maastricht (fol. 1776), and at
The Hague (4 vols
quarto, 1777-1799). A popularising version was also issued in 6 vols octavo (Paris, 1781-83). Of the four editions, the "best" edition is the 4 vol quarto edition of The Hague.
The latter edition is enriched with the contributions of the Dutch orientalist
Schultens, Johann Jakob Reiske (1716-1774), and by a supplement provided by
Visdelou and Antoine Galland. Herbelot's other works, none of which have been published, comprise an
Oriental Anthology, and an
Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Latin Dictionary.
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