Carl Brockelmann

Carl Brockelmann (17 September 1868 – 6 May 1956) was a German Semitist and the foremost orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, Königsberg. He is best known for his multi-volume Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur ('History of Arabic literature'; first published 1898–1902) which included all writers in Arabic to 1937, and remains the fundamental reference volume for all Arabic literature, apart from the Christian Arabic texts (covered by Georg Graf).

He also published Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar (1899), Semitische Sprachwissenschaft (1906), Lexicon syriacum (1928), and Arabische Grammatik (under his own name 1941, but this was the eleventh edition of the grammar of Albert Socin, previously revised by Brockelmann several times).

Career

Brockelmann pursued Oriental studies, classical philology, and history in Rostock, Breslau, and Strasburg. He earned his Ph.D. in Strasburg, in 1890, under the direction of Theodor Nöldeke, and his Dr. habil. degree in Breslau in 1893. In 1900 he was appointed to a chair in Breslau, in 1903 in Königsberg, in 1910 in Halle, in 1922 in Berlin, and in 1923 in Breslau again. From 1932 to 1933 he served as the rector of the Breslau University. After his retirement in 1935 he returned to Halle/Saale, where he died.¹

Works

• Brockelmann, Carl (1895). Lexicon Syriacum (1st ed.). Berlin: Reuther & Reichard.
  • Brockelmann, Carl (1928) [1895]. Lexicon Syriacum (2nd ed.). Halle: Niemeyer.
• Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. First published as Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols (Weimar: Felber, 1898-1902). Brockelmann then published three ('supplement volumes'): , 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1937-42). Thereafter, he published a second edition of the original two volumes: , [2nd edn], 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1943-49). The complete set was then corrected and translated into English: Carl Brockelmann, , trans. by Joep Lameer, Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East, 117, 5 vols in 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2016-19),  978-90-04-33462-5