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French orientalist (1795–1871)
Armand-Pierre Caussin de Perceval
(1795–1871) was a French
orientalist
.
He was born in
Paris
on 13 January 1795. His father,
Jean-Jacques-Antoine Caussin de Perceval
(1759?1835), was professor of
Arabic
in the
College de France
.
[1]
In 1814 he went to
Constantinople
as a
student interpreter
, and afterwards travelled in Asiatic
Turkey
, spending a year with the
Maronites
in the
Lebanon
, and finally becoming
dragoman
at
Aleppo
. Returning to Paris, he became professor of modern Arabic in the
School of Living Oriental Languages
in 1821, and also professor of Arabic in the College de France in 1833. In 1849 he was elected to the
Academy of Inscriptions
. He died on 15 January 1871 at the
Siege of Paris
.
[1]
Caussin de Perceval published (1828) a useful
Grammaire arabe vulgaire
, which passed through several editions (4th ed., 1858), and edited and enlarged
Ellious Bocthor
's
Dictionnaire francais-arabe
(2 vols., 1828; 3rd ed., 1864); but his great reputation rests almost entirely on one book, the
Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme, pendant l'epoque de Mahomet
(3 vols., 1847–1849), in which the native traditions as to the early history of the Arabs, down to the death of
Muhammad
and the complete subjection of all the tribes to
Islam
, are brought together with wonderful industry and set forth with much learning and lucidity. One of the principal manuscript sources used is the great
Kitab al-Aghani
of
Abu al-Faraj
, which has since been published (20 vols.,
Boulak
, 1868) in
Egypt
; but no publication of texts can deprive the
Essai
of its value as a trustworthy guide through a tangled mass of tradition.
[1]
References
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