Dominicus Germanus

Franciscan Orientalist, pupil of Tommaso Obicini, whose Latin translation of al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya, ‘Logica Solana’, survives in manuscript in the Escorial.

Life

Dominicus Germanus was born in 1588 in Schurgast in Silesia and entered the Franciscan order in 1624. In Rome he studied Arabic and other Oriental languages under Tommaso Obicini at the missionary college of San Pietro in Montorio, the same Franciscan house where Obicini had printed the Īsāghūjī with a Latin translation in 1625. After further study in Palestine he taught Arabic in Rome from 1636 to 1640, publishing an Arabic–Italian grammar and dictionary (Fabrica ovvero dittionario della lingua volgare arabica ed italiana, 1636), an apologetic treatise (Antithesis fidei, 1638) and the Fabrica linguae arabicae (1639). He returned to Palestine in 1640 and was named prefect of the mission of Samarkand in 1645. In 1652 Philip IV of Spain called him to El Escorial to teach Arabic, and he spent the rest of his life there, writing a Latin version and refutation of the Qurʾān (Interpretatio Alcorani) and apologetic treatises that remained unpublished; he died at the Escorial in September 1670.

Brockelmann records under the Shamsiyya a Latin translation, ‘Logica Solana’ (‘the logic of the Sun’, rendering al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya), by ‘Germanus Silesiacus’, preserved in a manuscript of the Escorial, and refers for his life to B. Zimolong’s studies. It is the earliest European translation of the Shamsiyya recorded; the first printed one, Aloys Sprenger’s English version, appeared in Calcutta only in 1854.

Works

• Logica Solana — بر al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaLatin translation of al-Kātibī’s al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya; manuscript in the Escorial (‘Esc.² 1631’ in Brockelmann’s notation). Not checked against the manuscript.ترجمه
• Fabrica ovvero dittionario della lingua volgare arabica ed italianaRome 1636: grammar and dictionary of spoken Arabic.اثر
• Fabrica linguae arabicaeRome 1639: Arabic–Latin–Italian dictionary.اثر
• Interpretatio AlcoraniLatin version and refutation of the Qurʾān, considered the best Latin translation of its time (New Catholic Encyclopedia).ترجمه