François Pétis de la Croix

François Petis de la Croix (* 1653 in Paris, † December 4, 1713 ) was a French orientalist.

Born the son of an Arab translator at the French court, inherited de la Croix this office at his father's death in 1695 and gave it later to his own son, Alexandre- Louis -Marie further, who also distinguished himself in oriental studies. In early age Petis de la Croix was sent by Colbert to the Orient; He spent ten years in Syria, Persia and the Ottoman Empire. He mastered Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and gained a wealth of materials for his future writings.

He briefly served as secretary of the French ambassador in Morocco and was with the skillful Algeria French forces translators. He contributed to the peace treaty, which was drafted by him in Turkish and ratified in 1684. He led the negotiations with Tunis and Tripoli in 1685 and in Morocco 1687th zeal, tact and linguistic knowledge, which he showed in these and other stores with oriental courts, were finally rewarded in 1692 by his appointment to the Arabic chair at the Collège Royal de France, where he remained until his death.

François Petis de la Croix published Contes Turcs (Paris, 1707), Les Mille et un jours (5 volumes, Paris, 1710-1712 ); an Armenian dictionary and a report on Ethiopia. But the lasting monument of his literary fame is its excellent French version of Sharafuddin Ali Yazdi's Zafar Nama or Histoire de Timur Bec ( of 828 AH, AD 1425), a biography of Timur Lenk, which was published posthumously ( 4 volumes, Paris, 1722). This work, a rare example of critical Persian history, has been prepared under the auspices of the Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, the son of Shah Rukh and grandson of the great Tamerlane.

The only flaw in his otherwise flawless translation is that he erroneously the important part, the Sultan Ibrahim had at the Zafar Nama, Timur himself ascribes.