Summary
Author of the Bibliothèque orientale (published posthumously in 1697, with a preface by Antoine Galland), which Said treats in Chapter One, II of Orientalism as the celebrated instance of learned imagery and dramatic form coming together in the Orientalist theater: the standard reference work in Europe until the early nineteenth century (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.72-74 / printed p.63-65).
Details
- D’Herbelot read a great number of works in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, first composed a dictionary of these three languages, then studied Oriental history, theology, geography, science and art, and planned two works — a bibliothèque, an alphabetically arranged dictionary, and a florilège, an anthology — of which only the first was completed (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.73 / printed p.64).
- In Galland’s account as Said presents it, the Bibliothèque divided history into sacred and profane (the Jews and Christians in the first, the Muslims in the second) and pre- and postdiluvian periods, and took in the Mogul, Tartar, Turkish and Slavonic histories and all provinces of the Muslim Empire from the Extreme Orient to the Pillars of Hercules (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.73-74 / printed p.64-65).
- Under the entry for Mohammed the Bibliothèque places him as an imposter and founder of a heresy (see Bibliothèque orientale); Said: the dangers of free-wheeling heresy are removed when Mohammed is transformed into ideologically explicit matter for an alphabetical item, sitting quietly on his portion of the Orientalist stage (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.74-75 / printed p.65-66).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Bibliothèque orientale, Orientalism, Imaginative geography