WEIL, GUSTAV

WEIL, GUSTAV (1808–1889), Orientalist. Born in Sulzburg, Baden, to a rabbinical family, he was schooled at home and at Metz, and later studied at Heidelberg, where he began his work in Arabic which he continued in Paris. As a correspondent he went with the French forces to algeria (1830) and proceeded to cairo , where he spent over four years as French instructor at a medical school, devoting most of his time to enriching his Arabic and mastering Persian and Turkish. He spent some time at Constantinople. Upon his return to Heidelberg, he was employed as librarian, later as teacher, and, after two decades, was awarded a professorship. His extensive literary output attempted to present a general survey of Arab letters and history, often on the basis of manuscript material. It can be divided into (1) work on the koran and tradition, e.g., the first introduction to the Koran (Historischkritische Einleitung, etc., 1844) and a study tracing the rabbinic background of much of the biblical lore of the Muslims (Biblische Legenden der Muselmaenner, 1845; English tr. 1846); (2) translations (of the Arabian Nights; the biography of the Prophet by Ibn-Isḥāk); (3) history, especially Geschichte der Chalifen (5 vols. 1846–62); a shorter work was translated by S. Khuda Bukhsh as History of the Islamic Peoples (Calcutta, 1914). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: JE; J. Fueck, Die arabischen Studien in Europa (1955), 175f. (Moshe Perlmann)