Professor of Syriac and Arabic, Syriac scholar. Al-Ḥāqilānī studied at the
Maronite College in Rome from 1620 to 1628 and concluded this period with
the publication of a short Syriac grammar (Linguae
syriacae sive chaldaicae institutio, 1628), intended for students
of the Maronite College who had difficulty with the high academic level of
[
Jirjis ʿAmīra
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Amira-Jirjis)’s grammar. Upon his return to Lebanon, he started
working as a diplomat for the Emir Fakhr al-Dīn who, in his resistance
against the Ottomans, forged an alliance between the Maronites and the
Druzes, but was captured (1634) and executed in Istanbul. Fakhr al-Dīn’s
demise forced al-Ḥāqilānī to return to Italy, where he taught Arabic and
Syriac at the Sapienza College in Rome, spent some time in Florence, and was
appointed professor of oriental languages at Pisa. In the 1630s he was
involved in the Paris Polyglot, to which he contributed the Syr. and Arabic
text of the book of Ruth, with LT, and the Arabic text of 3 Maccabees. In or
around 1645 al-Ḥāqilānī was appointed professor at the Collège Royal (the
later Collège de France) in Paris. In 1653 he returned to Rome, where he
taught on behalf of the ‘Propaganda Fide’, before being appointed, in 1660,
Scriptor of the Vatican Library. In this position he prepared the first
catalogue of Syriac and Arabic mss. He died in 1664.
In the field of Syriac studies, in addition to his Syriac grammar (1628) and
his contribution to the Paris Polyglot, he published an annotated
translation of the ‘Catalogue of books’ by [
ʿAbdishoʿ bar
Brikha
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Abdisho-bar-Brikha) (1653). He also copied some Syriac mss., in particular
Paris, Bibl. Nat. Syr. 6 (biblical books), 248 (philosophical texts), 249
([
Bar ʿEbroyo
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Bar-Ebroyo-Grigorios)’s translation of Avicenna’s
introduction to logic), and 253 (Lexicon of [
Bar
ʿAli
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Bar-Ali-Isho)).