Abudacnus, Joseph

Abudacnus, Joseph, a learned Orientalist, Was born at Cairo, in Egypt, in the 17th century. For some time he was professor of Arabic at Oxford. He then went to Louvain, where he instructed in the Oriental languages. He is the author of Historia Jacobitarum seu Coptorum in Egypto, Libya, etc., Habitantium, published at Oxford in 1675, and translated into German by C. H. Trommler with the title Abbildun: der jacobiischen oder koptischen Kirche, with a preface by J.G. Walch (Jena, 1749); Whether this translation was made from the edition published in 1675, or from Seelen's (published at Lubeck in 1733), we do not know. See Mosheim, Dissertatio ad Hist. Ecclesiast. Pertinent. ii; 226; Seelen's preface to his edition of the Historia; Jocher, Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexikon, s.v., and in the Supplement, s.v. (B. P.)