SILVESTRE DE SACY Grammaire arabe à l’usage des élèves de l’Ecole spéciale des langues orientales vivantes.

Not in Blackmer or Atabey (neither first, nor second edition).

Second edition of this very important Arabic grammar.

Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838), a French linguist and orientalist, discovered at an early age his preference for oriental languages. He was the first Frenchman to attempt to read the Rosetta stone and eventually made some progress in identifying proper names in the demotic inscriptions.

From 1807 to 1809 he was the teacher of Jean-François Champollion, but their relationship would not endure for long as their political credos were opposed – Champollion being sympathetic for Napoleon while Silvestre de Sacy was a Royalist.

This second, enlarged edition, contains for the first time the Traité de la prosodie et de la métrique des Arabes.

Some occasional foxing, else fine.