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René Basset
Image: Unknown author, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

René Basset

رينيه باسيه

Notable figure 1855–1924 · Source: Yahya Murad, Muʿjam asmaʾ al-mustashriqin (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004), p. 204 · Second source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record: Basset, René (1855-1924)

From France; worked in Algeria

Field: Literature and poetry

Affiliation

Editor and translator of the Burda and Banat Suʿad

Biography

Born in Lunéville, he studied at Nancy and then at the School of Oriental Languages in Paris. He held the chair of Arabic at the École supérieure des lettres in Algiers from 1885 and became dean when it turned into a faculty (1909). He published al-Busiri's Burda with translation and commentary (1894), the Khazrajiyya on prosody, text and translation (1902), and Banat Suʿad using the commentaries of Thaʿlab and al-Jazuli (1911), and wrote on pre-Islamic Arabic poetry (1880) and on Arabic words in Berber.