Guillaume Postel was a French linguist, Orientalist, astronomer, Christian Kabbalist, diplomat, polyglot, professor, religious universalist, and writer.
Postel as depicted in Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins et payens (1584) by André Thevet
Note of Guillaume Postel on the Arabic astronomical manuscript of al-Kharaqī, Muntahā al-idrāk fī taqāsīm al-aflāk ("The Ultimate Grasp of the Divisions of Spheres"), 1536, Constantinople
De la République des Turcs, Guillaume Postel, Poitiers, 1560
Guillaume Postel: "Chasdia or Terra Australis, which the common sailors call Tierra del Fuego and others say is the Land of the Parrots"
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature, written in Akkadian.
Page from a 12th-century Quran in Arabic
