CARDAHI (Qardāhi), GABRIELE. - Born in Fajtrūn (Lebanon) on 20 February 1845, died in Rome on 7 November 1931. He entered the Aleppine Maronite Order in 1861, and completed his higher studies in the schools of Propaganda Fide, where he then taught Arabic and Syriac from 1875 to 1920. He was abbot procurator in Rome of the patriarch and of the Order (1878).
He wrote: a Treatise of Arabic-Italian grammar (Rome 1872). With a labor of over 30 years he further compiled Lobāb al-lobāb ("the best part of the quintessence"), a Syriac, Arabic and Latin dictionary. While he was revising and lithographing it, he died at the 15th letter. The rest was revised by Fr. Sfair. He published two Syriac works: Paradisus Eden of Bar Hebraeus (Beirut 1889) and Liber columbae of Bar Hebraeus (Rome 1898). Furthermore al-Kans at-tamīn, seu Liber thesaurī de arte poetica Syrorum (ibid. 1875), with an anthology and biographical notes; al-Iḥkām ("the well-made work", ibid. 1880), Syriac morphology, which later came out in an improved edition under the title of Iḥkām al-Iḥkām ("preciseness of the well-made work") al-Lobāb ("the quintessence"), a Syriac-Arabic dictionary in 2 vols. (Beirut 1887-91), when a work of this kind was entirely lacking; al-Manāhīg ("the luminous ways", Rome 1903), Syriac syntax.