Sylvester de Sassi

A French orientalist. His birth and death in Paris. He was widely knowledgeable about Eastern languages as well as Western. He learned Latin and Greek and their literature at his home. Then he turned to Arabic and Persian, with his knowledge of Turkish and Hebrew. He spent his life in teaching, authorship, and publishing. He was a professor of Arabic at the School of Eastern Languages in Paris in 1795 and was granted the title of Baron in 1813. He was one of those who worked to overthrow Napoleon I in 1814 and lived during the days of political coups in the era of the Revolution, secluded in the village of Brie and lost all his possessions. In 1832, he founded the Asian Society jointly with Rémusat and was elected its president. Among his works in Arabic are the book "Al-Anis Al-Mufid Lil Talib Al-Mustafid" and "Al-Mukhtar Min Kutub A'imma Al-Tafsir wa Al-Arabiyya" in grammar and language. Among what he published in Arabic are Kalila wa Dimna, the Maqamat of Al-Hariri, the travelogue of Abdul Latif Al-Baghdadi, and the Alfiah of Ibn Malik. He translated into French the book "Al-Nuqud" by Al-Maqrizi, "Al-Barda" by Al-Busiri, and other works. He authored in French "Al-Tahfa Al-Saniya Fi 'Ilm Al-Arabiyya" in two volumes, to teach French people Arabic grammar and morphology.