A Brill Calendar: September 10

Few men have been as important for the study of Arab language and literature at Leyden as Thomas van Erpe (Gorinchem, Holland, September 10 1584 – Leyden, November 13 1624).

However, In van Erpe’s case, the term ‘at Leyden’ can be widened to ‘in Europe’. His first book, published when ‘Erpenius’ was 29, is an Arab grammar which stayed in print until the early 19th century. The book historian Paul Hoftijzer draws a fine picture of this self-made scholar in his study of Leyden’s academic tradition.

“The university devoted extra care to the printing of texts in non-Western languages particularly in Hebrew and Aramaic, indispensable for the study of the Old Testament and in Arabic due to the access of that language to texts lost in Greek, but preserved in Arabic (…). Erpenius employed in his house at the Breestraat his own Eastern printing press, the ‘Typographia Erpeniana linguarum orientalium’. To compensate for the extra effort he had to make he received regularly financial support from the university. A year after his death his widow sold the whole stock of type to the Academy Printer Isaac Elzevier for the colossal amount of 8000 guilders.”

It is seldom that an investment has carried fruit in such abundance. Until the very last Elzevier, access to this typographical resource would be of crucial importance to the firm; that it didn’t become a total monopoly is due to the wisdom of Warner and Golius, Erpenius’ successors on the Arab Chair at Leyden.