BASSET, RENÉ. – French Orientalist, born in Lunéville on 24 July 1855, died in Algiers on 14 January 1924. His reputation as a scholar is linked to his many works on the Berber dialects, which make him the founder of Berber studies.
He also devoted himself to history (Les documents arabes sur l'expédition de Charlemagne en Espagne, Paris 1904), translated the apocrypha of the Old and New Testaments from Ethiopic (Paris 1893 ff.), and published, providing a version of part of it as well, the Sinassario arabo giacobita in Graffin’s Patrologia Orientalis (vols. 1, 3, 16, 17). Silvio Furlani