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Dominicus Germanus de Silesia

دومينيكوس جرمانوس

Notable figure 1588–1670 · Source: ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Humaid, Aʿmal al-mustashriqin al-ʿarabiyya fi al-muʿjam al-ʿarabi: dirasa wa-taqwim (PhD thesis, Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, 1433 AH), vol. 1, pp. 37, 40 · Second source: Deutsche Biographie (Neue Deutsche Biographie 4, 1959, p. 66): Dominicus Germanus de Silesia, 1588–1670, born Schurgast (Silesia)

From Germany; worked in Italy

Field: Lexicography

Affiliation

Lexicographer; author of the Fabrica linguae arabicae (1639)

Biography

A Franciscan friar born in Schurgast in Silesia, he taught Arabic at San Pietro in Montorio in Rome. He compiled a dictionary of colloquial Arabic and Italian (Rome 1636), then the Fabrica linguae arabicae, covering literary and spoken Arabic with Latin and Italian (Rome 1639). At the Escorial he translated the Qurʾan into Latin with excerpts from the commentaries (finished about 1664); it stayed in manuscript until Antonio García Masegosa edited it (Madrid 2009).