Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T14:09:10.919Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

XVI.—Maximilian Habicht and his Recension of the Thousand and one Nights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Duncan B. Macdonald
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Christian Maximillian Habicht was born at Breslau in 1775. He went to Paris in 1797 as Secretary of the Prussian Legation, and remained there until March, 1807, when he returned to Germany. During this ten years he studied Arabic under De Sacy and a Father Raphael, of Cairo, then teaching Arabic in Paris, and lived for some years in the same house with a certain Mordecai ibn an-Najjār, of Tunis, a Jew apparently from his (Epistolœ Arabicœ, pp. 2 f.; Breslau text, vol.i, p.iii).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , July 1909 , pp. 685 - 704
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1909

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 685 note 1 For Habicht's life see Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, Bd. x, S. 283, Leipzig, 1879,Google Scholar and Nouvelle Biographie générale, t. xxiii, p. 18, Paris, 1861.Google Scholar

page 686 note 1 I owe it to the courtesy of the authorities of the Breslau and of the Glasgow University Libraries that I was able to examine these MSS. at leisure in the summer of 1907. I am especially indebted to the thoughtful kindness of Mr. Galbraith, the Librarian of the Glasgow University Library.

page 687 note 1 I mean, of course, the recension discovered by Zotenberg and described in his Histoire d' 'Alâ al-Dîn. But this does not prejudge the question of earlier Egyptian recensions. Habicht's final volume is, I am sure, of such provenance.

page 688 note 1 Ibn an-Najjār copied stories for others besides Habicht. In the Leyden University Library there is one MS. which was plainly written by him (Cod. 1339; Cat., vol. i, p. 340). It was presented to the Leyden Library by Humbert.

page 689 note 1 In what follows H of course means Habicht, and IN, Ibn an-Najjār; Breslau is the Breslau printed text.

page 693 note 1 Is this the Aydé, a native Egyptian, whom Fleischer quotes in his Abulfedæ, Historica Anteislamica arabice, p. 223?Google Scholar

page 693 note 2 It is suggested to me by Mr. A. G. Ellis that he was Aug. F. J. Herbin, who published in 1803 at Paris Développemens des principes de la langue arabe moderne. This is very probable.

page 694 note 1 The Leyden MS. referred to above contains the stories of al-Ward fīl-akmām, of Abū-l-Ḥasan of 'Umān, of the talkative barber-surgeon (MS. vol. iv above), and three others of a page or two each.