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Ernest Renan
Image: Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Ernest Renan

إرنست رينان

Notable figure 1823–1892 · Source: Najib al-Aqiqi, al-Mustashriqun, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1964), vol. 1, p. 202; Yahya Murad, Muʿjam asmaʾ al-mustashriqin, p. 640 · Second source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record: Renan, Ernest (1823-1892)

Field: Philology and Semitics

Affiliation

Author of a general history of the Semitic languages (1855)

Biography

Born in Tréguier in Brittany, he became a leading scholar of the Eastern languages and travelled to Lebanon. He wrote a general history of the Semitic languages that discusses the link between Arabic grammar and Aristotle's logic, a study of Averroes and Averroism (Paris, 1852), and a paper on Arabic words in Greek inscriptions (1882). He was elected to the Académie française in 1878.