REINAUDJoseph Toussaint (1795-1867), a distinguished French Orientalist, was born in 1795 at Lambesc, Bouches du Rhône, and began to study for the church, but, being drawn towards Eastern learning, he came to Paris in 1815 and became a pupil of Silvestre de Sacy. In 1818 and the following year he was at Rome as an attache to the French minister, and studied under the Maronites of the Propaganda, but gave special attention to Mohammedan coins. In 1824 he entered the department of Oriental MSS. in the Royal Library at Paris, and in 1838, on the death of De Sacy, he succeeded to his chair in the school of living Oriental languages. In 1847 he became president of the Société Asiatique, and in 1858 conservator of Oriental MSS. in the Imperial Library. In all these functions Reinaud maintained the great reputation of the French Oriental school, ·and he also did good service with his pen. His first important work was his classical description of the collections of the Duc de Blacas (1828). To history he contributed an essay on the Arab invasions of France, Savoy, Piedmont, and Switzerland (1836), and various collections for the period of the crusades; he edited (1840) andin part translated (1848) the geography of Abulfeda; to him too is due a useful edition of the very curious records of early Arabic intercourse with China of which Renaudot had given but an imperfect translation (Relation des Voyages , &c., 1845) and various other essays illustrating the ancient and mediaeval geography of the East. His chief quality was indefatigable industry.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 20, p. 353
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