BARGÈS, JEAN JOSEPH LEANDRE:

By: Crawford Howell Toy, Moïse Schwab

Honorary canon of Notre Dame of Paris, abbé and Orientalist; born in 1810 at Auriol (Bouches-du-Rhône); died in 1896 near Marseilles. From 1835 he was a member of the Asiatic Society of Paris. After delivering lectures on Arabic as assistant in the chair of Arabic at Marseilles, he made an extensive trip through Algeria, the literary results of which were numerous. They first appeared only as notes in the "Revue de l'Orient" and in the "Journal Asiatique," as, for example, his article on the pronunciation of the Hebrew, entitled "Souvenir d'Oran" ("Journal Asiatique," 1848, ii. 172; translated into German, "Z. D. M. G." iii. 374). Later he published a complete itinerary in book form. In 1842 he became professor of Hebrew in the faculty of theology at the Sorbonne in Paris, retaining the position until the faculty was abolished in 1885.Special interest attaches to the fact that his Arabic knowledge was placed at the service of Hebrew literature. In collaboration with Beer Goldberg, who had transcribed Arabic texts in Hebrew characters, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, he published the following work: "R. Judah b. Koreish, ad Synagogam Judæorum Civitatis Fez Epistola de Studii Targum Utilitate et de Linguæ Chaldaicæ . . . Vocabulorum item Nonnullorum Barbaricorum Convenientia cum Hebræa," 1857. His other works in chronological order are: "Le Livre de Ruth, Expliqué par Deux Traductions Françaises," 1854; "Les Samaritains de Naplouse," 1855; "Libri Psalmorum David, Versio a R. Japheth b. Heli Bassorensi Karaita," 1861 (he had given a specimen of this work as early as 1846; and Munk, on presenting the work to the Academy, pointed out its interesting character ["Revue Orientale et Américaine," 1861, vii. 1-12; see M. Schwab, "Vie et Œuvres de Munk," p. 190]; "Hébron et le Tombeau du Patriarche Abraham, Traditions et Légendes Musulmanes Rapportées par les Auteurs Arabes," 1863; "Notice sur Deux Fragments d'un Pentateuque Hébreu-Samaritain Rapportés de la Palestine par F. de Saulcy," 1865; "Sefer Taghin, Liber Coronularum," Latin introduction, Hebrew text, with a Hebrew preface by Senior Sachs, 1866 (this publication is omitted by bibliographers, even by Isidore Loeb in his article on Bargés in the "Grande Encyclopédie"); "Inscription Hébraique de la Chaire de St.-Marc à Venise" ("Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne," 1880, ii. 222); the Song of Songs by Japheth b. Ali (1884); six monographs on Phenician inscriptions, published at different times (1847-88); a study of the Arabic inscriptions which once existed at Marseilles (1889); and various other works.

T. M. S.