Vocabulaire Français-Arabe, contenant les mots principaux et d'un usage plus journalier.

Beschreibung:

First edition, exceedingly rare, of the first separately published French-Arabic lexicon and one of the most valuable documents from Napoleon's Imprimerie in Egypt. We have recorded only four complete copies in institutions. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he saw printing as a strategic necessity and established a press immediately after reaching Alexandria. Known as the Imprimerie nationale in Cairo and the Imprimerie orientale et franc aise in Alexandria, it was the third press to be established in Ottoman territory, following Muteferrika's in Istanbul and Abdallah Zakher's press in Lebanon. Although discontinued after Napoleon's occupation ended, the Imprimerie inspired the Bulaq Press, as "many Egyptian intellectuals had seen the presses and realized the benefit to be derived from them" (Kent, p. 61). The dictionary is attributed to Jean Joseph Marcel (1776-1854), an engineer and printer. He was one of the savants who accompanied Napoleon's campaign as part of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts. Two works from the Imprimerie orientale appear with Marcel's initials: Alphabet arabe, laying out Arabic script, and Exercises de lecture d'arabe littéral, consisting of short extracts from the Qur'an. The Vocabulaire does not bear Marcel's name, though a manuscript at the Bibliothèque nationale de France has his initials at the end of the preface. Marcel was a seminal figure in Egyptology and first identified the demotic script on the Rosetta stone. Marcel's lexicon innovatively enabled the user to "perform the language in a social context, without judging the vernacular merely as a degraded form of the Classical. When he arrived in Alexandria, he had set himself to studying the 'dialecte vulgaire, le seul qui pût être intelligible pour tous'. His Vocabulaire is the product of this and on the whole a successful one" (Mairs, p. 41). The preface gives instructions forpronouncing Arabic letters, and the vocabulary section contains words organized by subjects (such as numbers, time, clothing, professions, military terms, sickness, animals, plants, and antiques). Following a section on verbs, the final eight pages present common phrases: "J'ai faim" (I am hungry), "Quel temps fait-il?" (What's the weather like?), "Je vais au Kaire" (I'm going to Cairo), "Etrillez mon cheval" (brush my horse), and so on. We have identified two states of the publication, with no clear priority, discernible by typographical and minor content differences in gathering E. The four complete copies are held at the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Oxford, Cambridge (both giving the date as 1799), and the Qatar National Library. A copy at the Bibliothèque nationale de France lacks a title page. Schnurrer 141. Allen Kent, Harold Lancour, Jay E. Daily (eds.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, vol. 24, 1978; Rachel Mairs, Arabic Dialogues: Phrasebooks and the learning of colloquial Arabic, 1798-1945, 2024. Duodecimo (147 x 115 mm.), pp. 80. Stitched with blue cord into near-contemporary plain card wrappers. Wrappers a little marked, text block pulling away from cords with a few pages loose at foot, pale brown stain at foot of title and in gutter of a handful of leaves, paper flaw at foot of A4 and fore edge of B1, small ink stain at foot of pp. 41-52. A very good copy, remarkably well-preserved. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 176619

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