Paris copy of the 1516 polyglot Genoa Psalter, in which a sixteenth-century reader has added the Lord’s Prayer and Sūrah al-Fātiḥah in Arabic and Latin, both copied from Guillaume Postel’s Grammatica Arabica (ca. 1538). BnF - Arsenal FOL-T-188

Sixteenth-century Arabic-Turkish dictionary (Lüġat-i Aḫterī), annotated by Louis de Byzance (1647-1722), born Raphaël Levi in Istanbul, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was ordained a priest at the Oratory in Paris. BnF, ms Supplément Turc 262

Persian-Turkish rhyming dictionary (Tuḥfe-i Şāhidī), glossed in French by André Du Ryer (1580-1660), the orientalist responsible for the first printed translation of the Gulistān and the first French translation of the Qur’an from Arabic. BnF, ms Turc 206

“Pity those who remain helpless in ignorance”: notes in Arabic, Persian, & Turkish by the French orientalist & librarian Louis Picques (1637-1699). Picques copied the proverb from the Persian-Turkish rhyming dictionary he was annotating (Tuḥfe-i Şāhidī). BnF, ms Suppl. Turc 312

Eighteenth-century copy of the Pandnāma traditionally attributed to ʿAṭṭār, made "for the use of the jeunes de langue of France", apprentice diplomatic interpreters in Istanbul, one of whom annotated the manuscript. BnF, ms Supplément Persan 648

Paris copy of the 1516 Genoa Psalter (which presents the text in Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, Greek, and Aramaic) from the library of the Couvent des Jacobins de la rue Saint-Honoré. Interestingly, a reader vocalized a portion of the Arabic translation. BnF, RES-A-491

Persian literature in the Mediterranean: a copy of the Gulistān with annotations in Italian and transliterated Turkish, today in the French National Library. BnF, ms Supplément Persan 860

Philological waste: pages of seventeenth-century notes listing transliterated Turkish words with their equivalents in Italian, French, or Latin, reused to form pasteboards for the binding of a Persian manuscript. BnF, ms Supplément Persan 759

“Le dernier jour du monde”: late seventeenth-century glosses, in Turkish and French, from a Paris copy of al-Zamakhsharī’s Muqaddimat al-adab, annotated by Louis de Byzance, priest of the Oratoire. BnF, ms Supplément Persan 449

An Arabic-Persian-Turkish glossary, copied in the early 18th century by one of the great orientalist autodidacts, Henry Wild, a tailor from Norwich who was said to have taught himself Hebrew, Arabic, & Persian, among other languages. University of Sydney Library, ms Add. Ms. 56

A Turkish manuscript translation of the Gospels at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, which appears to be independent of the ʿAlī Ufḳī, Kieffer, and Seaman translations. Notably, it uses both Coptic and Vulgate chapter divisions, and renders “Jesus” as ايسوس (Īsūs). ms L1/B.

Notes in a 1615 copy of Buxtorf’s Hebrew lexicon, charting the life of its owner, William Saumarez Smith, after acquiring it in 1860 while at Trinity College, Cambridge: ordained, elected fellow, years in India. 1890: Bishop of Sydney. Last entry, in another hand: “died 1909”

Found an interesting little 19th-century lithographed Arabic grammar, with text and tables reproduced from handwritten copy. The author, Nicolas Perron (1798-1876) was a French physician, Arabist, and educator.

Copenhagen copy of Hoca Mesʿūd’s Ferhengnāme, a 14th-century Turkish translation from Saʿdī’s Būstān, acquired in Leipzig in 1677 by the Danish scholar Hans Wandal, whose ownership note includes an Arabic proverb: “Assure yourself of victory after patience”. CKB, ms Cod. Turc. 20

A manuscript of Petraeus's Coptic-Arabic-Latin edition of Psalm 1, with annotations that were left out of the 1663 printing, presented in 1661 to the Danish King Frederick III. CKB, ms Or. Arch. 2(2).

Paul Babinski@paulbabinski.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“Greetings, O foremost among the masters of the languages of the Franks”: a commendatory poem, written in Turkish by an unidentified orientalist, prefacing Theodor Petraeus’s 1663 edition of the first Psalm in Coptic and Arabic.

Borna Izadpanah on 'Printing the Qur’an across Empires' All welcome to our final event of the academic year - in person in Oxford, or online (email secretary@oxbibsoc.org.uk).

“Greetings, O foremost among the masters of the languages of the Franks”: a commendatory poem, written in Turkish by an unidentified orientalist, prefacing Theodor Petraeus’s 1663 edition of the first Psalm in Coptic and Arabic.

“O Lord, always make Your grace a guide for me / Do not show me that path which does not lead to You”: a line of Turkish poetry (by Fużūlī) in an annotation on the “straight path” in Sūrah al-Fātiḥah by the seventeenth-century orientalist Theodor Petraeus. CKB, ms Or.Arch. 2(1)

A wonderful final project by a student this semester, now proudly on display in my office: a hand-colored reproduction of Nikolaus Meldemann’s composite woodcut 360-degree panorama of the 1529 Ottoman Siege of Vienna, in English translation and mounted on a rotating platform.

“God’s will is my will”: an entry in Arabic, Syriac, and Danish by a traveler from Denmark, Lauge Christensen, in the friendship album of the English Arabist William Bedwell (c. 1563-1632). Leiden, ms BPL 2753

Upcoming conference: Mecmuas in the Ottoman World. Interdisciplinary Approaches and Current Research 4–6 June 2026 mecmuaconference.univie.ac.at

“To my lord Toma ibn Erben, who is currently in Saumur, a city in France on the river Lijeris (Ligeris, i.e. Loire)” Address for a letter from the Egyptian Copt, Yūsuf ibn Abū Dhaqn to the Dutch Orientalist Thomas Erpenius. Leiden, ms or. 1228

Commentaries and glosses functioned as vehicles for the study of astronomy. @nadineloehr.bsky.social presents "Reflections on the Many Forms of Commentary in Astronomical and Astrological Manuscripts" in this week's Gotha Manuscript Talk 📆 Wednesday, 1 April 2026, 6:15 CET 1/2

Nineteenth-century collection of Turkish proverbs with French translation, collected by Adrien Royer from a dictionary compiled at the end of the seventeenth century by Antoine Arcère (1664-1699). BULAC, ms Turc 17a

“Can the soul be separated from the body?”: Ottoman poetry, recorded in transliterated Turkish by a seventeenth-century German traveler in an album with Ottoman decorative paper. ÖNB, ms Cod. 10313

A Paris copy of André Du Ryer’s 1630 Turkish grammar, annotated by a seventeenth-century French orientalist studying Turkish with the help of a manuscript Persian-Turkish dictionary. From the library of the Abbey of Saint-Victor. BnF-Arsenal, 4-BL-214

I was very happy to be part of this special issue on Julia's wonderful book, which I used as an opportunity to reflect on the broader history of Persian literature in Europe and the limits of viewing translation and literary history through a national lens.

Julia Hartley@ritorneropoeta.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Read @paulbabinski.bsky.social ‘s view from the early modern www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Read @paulbabinski.bsky.social ‘s view from the early modern www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Problem of Persian Literature in Europe: A View from the Early Modern

Published in Global Intellectual History (Ahead of Print, 2026)

tandfonline.com

It was so intellectually rewarding to work with @global-ih.bsky.social on a special section on my book! The essays by @paulbabinski.bsky.social and @drjoeford.bsky.social extended the reflection temporally, while @saraharens.bsky.social and Richard Hibbitt made me reflect on my critical method.

“God will bring ease after hardship”: 1593 album amicorum entry by Franciscus Raphelengius (1539-1597), quoting from Ecclesiastes (in Hebrew), Apollinaris’s Metaphrase of the Psalms (in Greek), and the Qur’an (in Arabic). Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ms 74 G 21