Icons, Ornaments, and Other Charms of Christian Arabic Books

This volume is devoted to the wide range of themes explored by the TYPARABIC project team. It includes essays on the religious and scholarly life of the Arabic-speaking Christians in Ottoman Syria and Lebanon in the 18th century, the efforts of Catholic and Protestant missions to distribute theological and liturgical books among Arab Christians, and collections of Oriental printed books in Western Europe, the Romanian Principalities, Georgia, and Ottoman Syria and Lebanon. It examines the transfer of artistic elements from Western to Eastern European presses and between Arab book printing centers, as well as the establishment of the first Arabic press in Aleppo in the early 1700s and the beginnings of the Khinshara press (Mount Lebanon). The volume concludes with a section on the promotion of printing in the Romanian Principalities during the reign of the Phanariot princes. “[…] these books offer new contexts for understanding what print is for and what books can do. [...] They herald a thrilling moment for the expansion of book historical scholarship in ways that rede?ne the historical record while also offering fuller, more appropriate contexts interpreting it. In doing so, they themselves are bringing about that revolutionary change in book culture.” (Elizabeth Savage, review in: The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 119, nr. 4, 519-522)