Lehistan Stories · Episode 6
Meniński's dictionary
Four huge volumes to help Europe learn Turkish, printed in 1680.
1623–1698 · 87 s
The story
In the 1640s, a young scholar from Lorraine, François Mesgnien, came to live in Poland.
Poland made him its own, and he became Franciszek Meniński.
In 1653 he travelled with a Polish embassy to Istanbul.
There he learned Turkish. One of his teachers was Wojciech Bobowski, a Pole at the sultan's court.
Meniński became the embassy's chief interpreter, and later Poland's envoy to the sultan.
In 1661 he moved to Vienna, to serve the emperor as an interpreter.
There he spent years on his great work: a dictionary of Turkish, Arabic and Persian, explained in Latin.
In 1680 it was printed in four huge volumes: the Thesaurus of Oriental Languages.
In 1683 the Ottoman army besieged Vienna. Old accounts say much of the print run was lost.
The siege was broken by a relief army led by the Polish king, Jan III Sobieski.
But the dictionary lived on. For generations, Europeans learned Turkish from Meniński's pages.
Even today, it is a treasure for anyone who studies the Turkish of his time.
What is documented, and what is told
His work is documented: the Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium (Vienna, 1680, four folio volumes), his years as an interpreter in Istanbul and Vienna, and his lessons with Wojciech Bobowski are recorded in Chalmers' General Biographical Dictionary, the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1797 and modern reference works. That much of the print run was lost in the siege of 1683 comes only from old accounts, so the film says "Old accounts say". The often-repeated story that his printing house burned is not confirmed and is not used, and no direct link between Meniński and Jan III Sobieski was found: the film connects them only through the siege.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Franciscus a Mesgnien Meninski
- A. Chalmers, The General Biographical Dictionary (1812–1817), "Meninski"
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd edition (1797), "Meninski"
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Poland iii. Iranian studies"
- F. Meninski, Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium, ed. S. Stachowski (Istanbul, 2000)
- Marzanna Pomorska, Maciej Kwaśniewski, Za co Polacy kochają Turcję / Polonyalılar Türkiye'yi neden sever (2023)
Credits and rights
The stories draw on Za co Polacy kochają Turcję / Polonyalılar Türkiye'yi neden sever by Marzanna Pomorska and Maciej Kwaśniewski (2023). The book is its authors' work: we tell the stories in our own words, check every fact independently and reproduce none of its text or pages.
Historical paintings are in the public domain. Each is credited with its artist, collection and source.
Archive pictures
- François à Mesgnien (Franciszek Meniński), Antoni Oleszczyński, 1830 (public domain)
- Wojciech Bobowski, Antoni Oleszczyński, 1830, Polona (public domain)
- View of Istanbul, Matrakçı Nasuh, c. 1537 (public domain)
- Vienna in 1683, Folbert van Alten-Allen (public domain)
- Impressio librorum, after Jan van der Straet (Stradanus), c. 1590, British Museum (public domain)
- The siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, Romeyn de Hooghe (public domain)
- Portrait of Jan III Sobieski, Daniel Schultz, 1673 (public domain)
Scenes marked "Illustration" are AI-generated and show no real people. The voice-over and the music were produced with AI tools.
The films and texts are © TURKPOL, shared under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 licence: you may share and adapt them for non-commercial purposes, crediting "TURKPOL, Lehistan Stories" with a link to this page.
Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0 · For any other use, write to info@turkpol.org.pl.