Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville (14 December 16258 December 1695) was a French Orientalist.

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Born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, he was educated at the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

, and devoted himself to the study of oriental languages, going to

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

to perfect himself in them by converse with the orientals who frequented its seaports. There he also made the acquaintance of Holstenius, the Dutch humanist (1596–1661), and Leo Allatius, the Greek scholar (1586–1669). On his return to France after a year and a half, he was received into the house of Fouquet, superintendent of finance, who gave him a pension of 1500 livres. Losing this on the disgrace of Fouquet in 1661, he was appointed secretary and interpreter of Eastern languages to the king. A few years later he again visited Italy, when the grand-duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany presented him with a large number of valuable Oriental manuscripts, and tried to attach him to his court. Herbelot, however, was recalled to France by Colbert, and received from the king a pension equal to the one he had lost. In 1692 he succeeded Jacques d'Auvergne in the chair of Syriac, at the Collège Royal. He died in Paris on 8 December 1695. His great work is the '' Bibliothèque orientale, ou dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde la connoissance des peuples de l'Orient'', which occupied him nearly all his life, and was completed in 1697 by

Antoine Galland Antoine Galland (; 4 April 1646 – 17 February 1715) was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of ''One Thousand and One Nights'', which he called '' Les mille et une nuits''. His version of the ta ...

. It is based on the immense Arabic bibliography (the ''Kashf al-Zunun'') of Hadji Khalfa ( Katip Çelebi), of which indeed it is largely an abridged translation, but it also contains the substance of a vast number of other

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

and Turkish compilations and manuscripts. The ''Bibliothèque'' was reprinted at

Maastricht Maastricht ( , , ; ; ; ) is a city and a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital city, capital and largest city of the province of Limburg (Netherlands), Limburg. Maastricht is loca ...

(fol. 1776), and at

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

(4 vols

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

, 1777–1799). A popularising version was also issued in 6 vols octavo (Paris, 1781–83). Of the four editions, the "best" edition is the 4 vol quarto edition of The Hague. That edition is enriched with the contributions of the Dutch orientalist Schultens, Johann Jakob Reiske (1716–1774), and by a supplement provided by Visdelou and Antoine Galland. Herbelot's other works, none of which have been published, comprise an ''Oriental Anthology'', and an ''Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Latin Dictionary''.

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