Fulgence Fresnel was a French Orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

 who was a native of Mathieu, Calvados

Mathieu, Calvados

Mathieu is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.-Démographie:...

. He was brother to physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827).

As a young man he studied sciences, literature and languages, and translated a few works of Berzelius

Berzelius

Berzelius is a secret society at Yale University named for the Swedish scientist Jöns Jakob Berzelius, considered one of the founding fathers of modern chemistry...

, stories by German novelist Johann Ludwig Tieck and fragments of a Chinese novel (Fragments chinois- 1822-23). He was a pupil of Sylvestre de Sacy (1768–1838) in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and in 1826 undertook studies of Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 at Maronite College in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

Later he was appointed consular agent in Jeddah

Jeddah

Jeddah, Jiddah, Jidda, or Jedda is a city located on the coast of the Red Sea and is the major urban center of western Saudi Arabia. It is the largest city in Makkah Province, the largest sea port on the Red Sea, and the second largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital city, Riyadh. The...

. In Arabia, he became a proficient speaker of local dialects, and came in contact with descendants of the Himyarites. Fresnel is credited as the first European to translate ancient Himyarite inscriptions.

In 1851 he was put in charge of a scientific expedition to Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

, where he was accompanied by Assyriologist Jules Oppert (1825–1905). When the expedition members were recalled in 1854, Fresnel chose to remain, and died in Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

on November 30, 1855. His notes on the journey were included in Oppert's work- Expedition en Mesopotamie (1858, 1863).

Selected publications

• Hoa-tchou-onan ou le Livre mysterieux, (1822)
• Poesies du desert de Schanfara, (1834)
• Lettres sur l’histoire des Arabes avant l’islamisme, (1837)
• Explications d’inscriptions himyarites (1838, 1845)