Bibliothèque orientale

D'Herbelot drew heavily on the Kashf al-Zunun of the Ottoman Katib Çelebi. Bevilacqua argues that Katib Çelebi's bibliography provided "not just content but inspiration for the organization" of d'Herbelot's work. The volume includes no Arabic script; all Arabic, Persian, and Turkish terms are rendered in French transliteration. According to Georg Lehner, "the exclusive use of oriental terms as lemmas shows the reluctance to classify the material according to 'Western' categories." == Publication history ==

D'Herbelot died in 1695, before the work was published. It was subsequently edited and prepared for publication by Antoine Galland, who would later become famous for translating One Thousand and One Nights into French. The Bibliothèque orientale was published in Paris in folio format in 1697, comprising 1,059 pages and 8,158 articles, preceded by a "Discours pour servir de préface" written by Galland. The work was reprinted several times during the 18th century. A supplementary volume titled ''Supplément à la Bibliothèque orientale de Monsieur d'Herbelot'' appeared in 1780 and included contributions by Claude Visdelou and Galland. == Significance and reception ==

Quoting Georg Lehner, Bevilacqua notes that "the Bibliothèque Orientale, which among other words introduced the term 'Islam' into French, irreversibly changed the way in which Europeans looked at Muslim lands." Robert Irwin has described the Bibliothèque orientale as having been "a precursor of the modern Encyclopaedia of Islam and as such a landmark in the history of orientalism." == References ==