Abstract
IN THE LAST OF numerous necrologies Adolf Neubauer wrote for JQR in its early years, he recounted the contributions of Joseph Derenbourg (1811–95), an Orientalist who published in the areas of rabbinics, medieval Jewish literature, and Arabic and Islamic studies, and who was a student of the renowned Orientalist Georg Freytag (another student of Freytag's was Abraham Geiger).1 After reviewing several of Derenbourg's editions and studies of medieval Hebrew translations of Arabic texts as well as works on Hebrew grammar and Jewish history, Neubauer added, "At the same epoch the deceased began his Arabic publications, which we shall not enumerate, since Mahometan subjects have only a remote right to entry into a Jewish Quarterly." The one work Neubauer singled out for inclusion was Derenbourg's edition of the Fables of Luqmān—the pre-Islamic sage for whom the Qur'an's thirty-first chapter is named—because Derenbourg identified him with the biblical Bal'am (based on the fact that l–q–m in Arabic and b–l–' in Hebrew both mean "swallow").