Author: [ERPENIUS (Thomas)]:
Title: Elementa Linguae Arabicae Ex Erpenii Rudimentis ut Plurimum Desumpta. Cujus Praxi Grammaticae novam Legendi Praxin addidit Leonardus Chappelow, Linguae Arabicae apude Cantabrigienses Professor.
Description: Londini: Typis Caroli Ackers.... Prostant apud R. Knapton..., & C. Crownfiedl & G. AThurlbourn..., 1730. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 198 x 120 mms., pp. [ii], vi [vii - viii Index], 103 [104 Errata], contemporary quarter calf, marbled boards (rubbed), raised bands on spine, red morocco label. A very good copy, with additions to the errata in a contemporary hand and the authograph "Thos. Wickins/ Oxon" on the top margin of the recto of the front free end-paper. The Dutch Orientalist scholar Thomas van Erpe (1584 - 1624), aka Thomas Erpenius, having learned several languages, became professor of Arabic in Holland in 1612 and was the first European to publish an accurate book of Arabic grammar. His Rudimenta linguae Arabicae was published in 1620. Leonard Chappelow (16902 - 1768) was a sizar to St. John's College, Cambridge, and, having completed his M. A. in 1716 was ordained deacon at Ely. He was appointed professor of Arabic in1720 and devoted himself to editing and translating. In 1730 he issued a revised and augmented edition of the standard Arabic grammar which had first been published by the Leiden professor of Arabic Thomas Erpenius in 1613 and was to remain unsurpassed until the nineteenth century, but ONDB records that, "Although Chappelow was esteemed as an Arabist at Cambridge, he made no advance in the teaching of his subject, and the somewhat halting hand in which the Arabic of his surviving manuscripts and marginalia is written hardly suggests a deep familiarity with the language. He seems to have been interested mainly in its use for missionaries."

Keywords: grammar arabic prose


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