Munk, Salomon

Autor: Munk, Salomon
Rok: 1805-1867
Oblast působnosti: orientalisté, arabisté, překladatelé

Biogr./Hist. údaje: V Německu narozený židovsko-francouzský orientalista, arabista, překladatel.
Zdroj: Autoritní databáze Národní knihovny ČR

Salomon Munk (May 14, 1803 – February 5, 1867) was a German-born Jewish-French Orientalist.Munk was born in Gross Glogau in the Kingdom of Prussia. He received his first instruction in Hebrew from his father, an official of the Jewish community; and on the latter's death he joined the Talmud class of R. Jacob Joseph Oettinger. At the age of fourteen he was able to officiate as "ba'al ḳore" (reader of the Torah) in the synagogue of the Malbish 'Arummim society at Gross Glogau.In 1820 he went to Berlin, where he came into friendly relations with Leopold Zunz and with the philologist E. W. Zumpt, studying Latin and Greek with E. Gans. Two years later he entered the Joachimsthaler Gymnasium, supporting himself at the same time by tutoring. In 1824 he entered the University of Berlin, attending the lectures of Böckh, Hegel, and especially of Bopp.As no Jews were at that time eligible for government positions in Prussia, Munk left the university without taking a degree, deciding to go to France. However, he first spent one term at the University of Bonn, studying Arabic with Freytag and Sanskrit with Lassen. On passing through Weimar he visited Goethe, who notes that fact in his journal.In 1828 he went to Paris with the assistance of the young poet Michael Beer, the brother of Meyerbeer. Here also, as in Berlin, he at first supported himself by tutoring, among his pupils being the young brothers Alphonse and Gustave de Rothschild. In 1838 he was appointed cataloguer of Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, and Arabic manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris.Munk now devoted himself to the study of the Judæo-Arabic literature of the Middle Ages and to the works of Maimonides, more especially the latter's Moreh Nebukim. He went direct to the Arabic original, supplementing the texts he found at the Bibliothèque from texts he had copied at Oxford. At the same time he made a thorough study of Aristotle, who is constantly quoted by Maimonides. In this way he gathered the necessary material for his edition of the Arabic text of the Moreh, with translation and annotations, which he published in three large volumes, long after he had become blind (1856, 1861, 1866). He had lost his eyesight in 1850 while in the course of cataloguing the Sanskrit and Hebrew manuscripts in the possession of the library.