Re: learning Arabic in the 17th century

by "Spagyrique" <Alchimique@[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Jan 11, 2005 at 06:23 PM

"Raymond Roy" <belamiNoSpam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:40e4a509.1790952@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Hi everyone!
>
> It is a know fact that the first European translation of the 'Thousand
> and One Nights' (in French at least) was done by Antoine Galland in
> 1704-1711. Three hundred years back.

AFAIK Antoine Galland lived in Turkey (1670) and visited Syria and
Palestine
(1673).

There is a brief biography of Galland in the Garnier Flammarion edition of
Les Mille et Une Nuits.
One can read there for example:

1677: il repart pour Smyrne...

1679: il fait un long voyage en Orient pour le compte de la Cie des Indes
Orientales, puis de Colbert.

1688: retour definitif en France....

Galland therefore had ample op****tunities to learn and study Arabic...

Once back in France he kept working as an "orientaliste" scholar...

His translations apparently were far from literal.

See Rene R. Khawam's introduction to his own version/translation of the
1001
Nights.

19 Posts in Topic:

learning Arabic in the 17th century

belamiNoSpam@[EMAIL PROTE

2004-07-02 01:10:30

Re: learning Arabic in the 17th century

Yusuf B Gursey <ybg@[E

2004-07-02 02:19:18

Re: learning Arabic in the 17th century

Yusuf B Gursey <ybg@[E

2004-07-02 02:47:57

Re: learning Arabic in the 17th century

Yusuf B Gursey <ybg@[E