ABRAMO ECCHELLENSE. — In Arabic Hâqilì, because he was a native of the village of Hâqilì in Lebanon (b. 1605, d. 5 July 1664). He studied at the Maronite College in Rome and later became professor of Arabic and Syriac at the Sapienza and a writer in the Vatican Library. He taught Arabic and Syriac at the University of Paris while collaborating on the Polyglot Bible of M. Le Jay. He also contributed extensively to the Arabic Bible printed in 1671 with the text of the Vulgate under the care of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. His works were published in Rome and Paris.
Among his other works, in 1651 he translated and published in Paris the Chronicon Orientale of Ibn ar-Râhib (filius monachi), to which he added, from p. 141 onward, the Historiae orientalis supplementum. In 1653 he published in Rome, with translation and notes, the catalogue of Ebediesu, which was later reprinted with corrections and more extensive notes by G. S. Assemani in Bibl. Orient. III, 1.
Another of his works is: Eutychius Patriarcha Alexandrinus vindicatus, of which the first part, printed in 1661, deals with De Ecclesiae Alexandrinae originibus, and the second, printed in 1660, treats De origine nominis Papae nec non de illius proprietate, de Romano Pontifice, adeoque de eiusdem primatu. In these works he refutes GIOVE. SEDEN, who, by a faulty translation of Eutychius, had deduced Protestant theories on hierarchy and against the Pope. Finally, mention should be made of the A. E. et Leonis Allatii concordantia nationum christianarum orientalium in fidei cathol. dogmate (1655). His 64 manuscripts, described by G. S. Assemani (Bibl. Orient., I, 573 sq.), passed to the Vatican Library.