PETIS DE LA CROIX, FRANCOIS (1653-1713)

This article appears in Volume V21, Page 306 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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PETIS DE LA CROIX, FRANCOIS (1653-1713) , French Orientalist, was born in Paris in 1653. He was son of the Arabic interpreter of the French court, and inherited this office at his father's death in 1695, afterwards transmitting it to his own son, Alexandre Louis Marie, who also distinguished himself in Oriental studies. At an early age he was sent by Colbert to the

East

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

; during the ten years he spent in Syria, Persia and Turkey he mastered Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and also collected rich materials for future writings. He served a short time as secretary to the French

ambassador

AMBASSADOR (also EMBASSADOR, the form sometimes still used in America; from the Fr. ambassadeur, with which compare Ital. ambasciatore and Span. embajador, all variants of the Med. Lat. ambassiator, ambassiator, ambasator, &c., derived from Med. Lat. amba

in Morocco, and accompanied as interpreter the French forces sent against Algiers, contributing to the satisfactory

settlement

SETTLEMENT
SETTLEMENT, ACT OF

of the treaty of peace, which was

drawn

DRAWN

up by himself in Turkish and ratified in 1684. He conducted the negotiations with Tunis and

Tripoli

in 1685, and those with Morocco in 1687; and the zeal, tact and linguistic knowledge he manifested in these and other transactions with Eastern courts were at last rewarded in 1692 by his appointment to the Arabic chair in the College Royal de France, which he filled until his death in 1713.
He published Conies turcs (Paris, 1707), and Les Mille et un jours (5 vols., Paris, 17101712); an Armenian Dictionary and an Account of Ethiopia. But the lasting

monument

MONUMENT (Lat. monumentum or monumentum; from monere, to advise, bring to mind, remind; the German equivalent is Denkmal)

of his literary fame is his excellent French version of Sharaf-uddin `Ali Yazdi's Zafarnama or History of Timur (completed 828 A.H.; A.D. 1425), which was given to the world nine years after his death (4 vols., Paris, 1722; Eng. trans. by J. Darby, London, 1723). This

work

WORK

, one of the rare specimens of a fairly

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

history Persia can boast of, was compiled under the auspices of Mirza Ibrahim Sultan, the son of Shah Rukh and grandson of the

great

GREAT

Timur. The only error committed by Petis de la Croix in his otherwise very correct

translation

TRANSLATION

is that he erroneously ascribed the important share which Ibrahim Sultan had in the Zafarnama to Timur himself.

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