Summary
Barthélemy d’Herbelot’s alphabetically arranged dictionary of Oriental knowledge, published posthumously in 1697 with a preface by Antoine Galland; in Said’s account it remained the standard reference work in Europe until the early nineteenth century and transformed a loose collection of facts into a rational Oriental panorama, from A to Z (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.72-75 / printed p.63-66).
Details
- The introduction of the Cambridge History of Islam, as Said presents it, considers the Bibliothèque, with George Sale’s preliminary discourse to his translation of the Koran (1734) and Simon Ockley’s History of the Saracens (1708, 1718), “highly important” in widening the new understanding of Islam and conveying it to a less academic readership (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.72-73 / printed p.63-64).
- Galland assured readers the work was uniquely “utile et agréable”, where Postel, Scaliger, Golius, Pococke and Erpenius had produced studies too narrowly grammatical, lexicographical or geographical (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.74 / printed p.65).
- Its entry for Mohammed, as Said quotes it in his translation, begins: “This is the famous imposter Mahomet, Author and Founder of a heresy” — the entry goes on that the heresy has taken on the name of religion, which we call Mohammedan, and refers the reader to the entry under Islam (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.75 / printed p.66).
- What the Bibliothèque conveys, for Said, is an idea of Orientalism’s power: henceforth to get at the Orient the reader must pass through the learned grids and codes provided by the Orientalist, and truth becomes a function of learned judgment, not of the material itself (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.76 / printed p.67).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Barthélemy d’Herbelot, Orientalism, Imaginative geography