Joseph Charles Mardrus (1868-1949), born in Cairo, was a French physician and a noted translator. Today he is best known for his translation of the Thousand and One Nights from Arabic into French, which was published from 1898 to 1904, and was in turn rendered into English by Powys Mathers.

As a medical man, he worked for the French government, being sent to Morocco and the Far East. He produced other translations, some illustrated by the Swiss engraver François-Louis Schmied (1873-1941).

He married the novelist and poet Lucie Delarue in 1900. They divorced later, around 1915.

Works

• Les Mille et Une Nuits (The 1001 Nights, edited by Robert Laffont; in the Bouquins collection)
• L’Apocalypse qui est la révélation
• Le Livre des Morts de l’Ancienne Égypte
• Le Cantique des Cantiques
• Le Livre des Rois
• Sucre d’amour (1926), illustrated by François-Louis Schmied
• La Reine de Saba (1918)
• La Reine de Saba et divers autres contes (1921)
• Le Koran, commissioned by the French government in 1925
• Le Paradis musulman (1930), illustrated by François-Louis Schmied
• Toute-Puissance de l'Adepte (Le Livre de la Vérité de Parole) 1932