SCHICKARD, Wilhelm.

First edition of this ‘Tarikh’ or History of the Persian kings by the German Hebraist and Arabist Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635), also known as an astronomer and horologist, and designer of an early calculating machine. This genealogical chronicle, beginning with the C3rd AD Ardashir I and ending with the C7th Yazdigerd III, the last Sasanian emperor, is a valuable source for early Islamic history, culture and geography. It was translated from a Turkish manuscript in Ottoman Arabic with a colourful history: found in the library of Filakovo Castle in modern-day Slovenia, which was recaptured from the Ottomans by the Holy Roman Empire in 1593, and brought to Germany by the traveller Veit Marchthaler of Ulm (1564-1641), where it was left unstudied for almost thirty years. The reappearance of the manuscript, a copy of the Tavarich Beni Adam by Yusuf ibn ‘Abd al-Latif, caused Schickard ‘both excitement and despair,’ because of his lack of proficiency in the Ottoman script and language (Stefan Hanss, ‘Ottoman Language Learning in Early Modern Germany’ in Central European History, 54.1 (2021), p. 25). Unable to gain help from any scholars in Europe, Schickard muddled through the manuscript by finding useful cognates between German, Hebrew, Arabic and Ottoman, producing his edition and commentary in less than three months (Hanss, p. 26).  

Schickard saw Persian history as an overlooked and significant branch of human culture, the study of which could illuminate the Hebrew and Arabic languages, early Islamic history, and the geography of the medieval Islamic world. He also believed he could subordinate the Persian genealogy to the biblical genealogy of Christ, in opposition to what he called the ‘lies’ of the Muhammadans. The work contains two extensive indexes, one of people and one of places mentioned in the text, noting references to Egypt, Ethiopia, Baghdad, Mecca, the Ganges, and even Nova Zembla in Russia. The index of persons refers to Timur or Tamerlane, Schickard noting that the city of Nishapur in modern-day Iran was made infamous by the cruelty of Tamerlane (Tamerlanis crudelitate postmodum nobilitata), clearly confusing him with Genghis Kahn, whose army sacked the city in 1221, notoriously destroying almost the entire population in reprisal for the death during the siege of Genghis’s son-in-law Taghachar. Elsewhere Schickard refers to the vast size of Genghis’s empire and his patrimony of many descendants.