5i0 MEMOIR OF FLEISCHER 



above quoted passage from his preface to Fell's Indices : " Ceteris adsevero 

 otium. mihi et vires defuisse, non voluntatem et studium.^^ Certainly then 

 it was not possible for hini to find leisure for the preparation and exe- 

 cution of comprehensive works embodying the results of independent 

 research. The translation of the Coran, the work of many years, was 

 left uncompleted. However, not all his powers were absorbed by his 

 efforts in behalf of his pupils, his colleagues, and the learned world in 

 general. He devoted every leisure moment to his appointed task of 

 maintaining Arabic-Mohammedan philology upon the eminence to which 

 De Sacy had raised it, and if possible of elevating it still higher. He 

 diligently continued up to the last moment the critical work that had 

 opened new paths to science upon his first appearance. For a long time 

 he wrote reviews of new books in the Hallische Litteraturzeitung, in 

 Gersdorfs Bepertorium and in otherjouruals, but afterwards exclusively 

 in the Zeitschrift der Beutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft. For the 

 readers of the Beitrdge, special mention may be made of his detailed 

 notices of the re-modelled edition of Eiickert's Poetics and Rhetoric of 

 the Persians, and of Bacher's edition of Sa'di's short poems, both repub- 

 lished in the third volume of his Minor Worlds. Besides, he contrib- 

 uted extensively to the improvement of the various editions of Arabic 

 texts, especially of Makkari and Abulmahasiu, and wrote a number of 

 short articles on chance topics connected with Arabic, Persian, and 

 Turkish literature, history, and archa^ologj^, as they were suggested to 

 l)im by hints in his correspondence, in his official work for the German 

 Oriental Society, etc. Two great series, by far the most important in 

 a mass of highly instructive material, must be noted : the celebrated 

 contributions {Beitrdge) to De Sacy's Grammaire Arabe, and those to 

 Dozy's Supplement aux dictionnaires arabes. 



" Grammatici Arabes utilissimi nobis {snntenim thesauri for mar um totius 

 que antiquitatis promi condiy^ was the opinion of Ewald.* It is perhaps 

 De Sacy's greatest distinction that he put Arabic philology upon this 

 basis, and no less deserving of praise is Fleischer for having continued 

 and supplemented this work in a spirit of modesty and life-long devotion 

 to his beloved teacher, aided by the superior knowledge which he had 

 learned how to acquire in the school of De Sacy. Those endowed with 

 unusual talent, and furnished besides with a peculiar gift for the Arabic 

 liinguage, may succeed in understanding Arabic, and in avoiding all the 

 hidden snares in the characters the vocabulary and the syntax, laid for 

 the guileless reader by this most treacherous of all languages with 

 which I am acquainted. But the average scholar is lost, that is to say 

 sinks back upon a lamentably low stage of philological development, 

 unless he masters thoroughly his De Sacy with Fleischer's additions. 

 That diligent and willing students are no longer exposed to this danger 

 of retrograding we owe to "the old man." And the place tilled in its 

 time by the worn, interleaved Freytag, or that filled in the domain of 



* Gramm. crit. ling. Jr.,i,p. iv. 



