Abstract

Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes, Count of Campomanes, was one of the most prominent figures of Spanish Enlightenment. One of his main intellectual interests was that of the Arabic erudition. We know many things about the great institutional projects in which Campomanes was involved, linked, for example, with his role as Director of the Real Academia de la Historia, but lesser is known about other aspects linked with his relationship with Arabic erudition: how did he learn Arabic, how much did he know about the Orientalist tradition... This paper studies how Campomanes learnt Arabic, throught the analysis of documents from his own personal archive, and other manuscripts from the Biblioteca Nacional de España regarding one of Campomanes’ colleagues, José Carbonel y Fogasa. Campomanes and Carbonel studied Arabic with the maronite monk Miguel Casiri and their documents provide an unique material, not only for the study of Arabic and other foreign languages in the 18th century, but also for the history of European Orientalism.