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Podcast: this is how you create a dictionary for an unknown Middle Eastern language

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

How do you write a new dictionary? The very first, of a language that no one around you has mastered? Leave that to Leiden scholars. Together with his successors, Josephus Scaliger (1540-1609) managed to open up Arabic to the Western world.

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In this episode of the UBLpodcast, Kasper van Ommen, curator of Western printed works and coordinator of the Scaliger Institute, explains how Leiden scholars managed to bring this monumental task to a successful conclusion. He does so using original works from the Special Collections of Leiden University Libraries.

In connection with the opening of the new Middle Eastern Library, this series of the UBLpodcast highlights special objects from the rich Middle Eastern collections.

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