Bibliothèque orientale

For the library of Saint Joseph University in Beirut, see Bibliothèque Orientale (Saint Joseph University).

The Bibliothèque orientale, ou Dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui regarde les connaissances des peuples de l'Orient (French for 'Oriental Library, or Universal Dictionary Containing Everything Relating to the Knowledge of the Peoples of the Orient'), better known as the Bibliothèque orientale (French: [biblijɔtɛk ɔʁjɑ̃tal]), is a reference work on Islamic civilization compiled by Barthélemy d'Herbelot and first published posthumously by Antoine Galland in 1697.

Comprising 8,158 alphabetically arranged articles, the Bibliothèque orientale was, according to Alexander Bevilacqua, "by far the most ambitious and encompassing creation to date" in early modern European scholarship on the Islamic world, and "a massive act of translation" which "brought hundreds of Arabic, Persian and Turkish books to the attention of European readers for the first time." As worded by Georg Lehner, "the Bibliothèque Orientale remained one of the most important reference works on Arabic-Islamic civilization up to the early nineteenth century."

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