Gabriele CARDAHI (Qardāhī). — Born in Fajtrūn (Lebanon) on 20 Feb. 1845, died in Rome on 7 Nov. 1931. He entered the Aleppine Maronite Order in 1861 and completed his higher studies at the schools of Propaganda Fide, where he later taught Arabic and Syriac from 1875 to 1920. He served as procurator-abbot in Rome for the patriarch and the Order (1878).
He wrote: a Treatise on Arabic-Italian grammar (Rome 1872). After more than 30 years of labor he compiled the Labāb al-labāb (“the best part of the quintessence”), a Syriac-Arabic-Latin dictionary. While revising and lithographing it, he died at the 15th letter; the remainder was revised by Fr. P. Sfair. He published two Syriac works: Paradisus Eden by the Sebense (Beirut 1889) and Liber columbae by Bar Hebraeus (Rome 1898). He also published al-Kanz at-tamīn, seu Liber thesauri de arte poetica Syrorum (ibid. 1875), with an anthology and biographical notes; al-Iḥām (“the well-made work,” ibid. 1880), Syriac morphology, later reissued in an improved edition under the title Iḥām al-Iḥām (“clarification of the well-made work”); al-Labāb (“the quintessence”), a Syriac-Arabic dictionary in 2 vols. (Beirut 1887–91), when no work of its kind existed; and al-Manāhiğ (“the luminous paths,” Rome 1903), Syriac syntax.