Small 8vo. 366 pp., [16], Arabic text within ruled borders, preface by Abdallah Al-Zakhir, full calf covers, lightly rubbed round corners, decorated gilt spine, red edges, marbled end papers, first page and pages 353-365 have been professionally restored, occasional spotting, otherwise copy in very good condition, printed at St. John the Baptist Monastery, Dayr Al-Shuwayr, Lebanon, 1780.

Synopsis

From the translation of Abdallah ibn al-Fadl al Antaki, printed for the first time in Aleppo, then reprinted various times by Athanase IV (born Athanase Dabbas).
“In 1733 in al-Shuwair, a town in the Lebanese mountains, a printing press was set up with the support of the Jesuits in the Greek Catholic monastery of Saint John the Baptist, which was the real “pilot workshop” of indigenous Arab typography. This was the main workplace of Abdallah az-Zahir (d. 1748), a Syrian Catholic who had left Aleppo because of differences with Atanasiyus ad-Dabbas and the Byzantine Orthodox Church and found refuge, together with other brothers of the faith, in al-Shuwair. The typographic style of the monastic printing press bears the unmistakable hallmark of az-Zahir. Instructed in the goldsmith’s art by his father, he later taught himself additional arts such as engraving, painting and woodcarving. Using these skills, he drafted elements of book design, often evidently inspired by European originals. But az-Zahir’s indisputably greatest contribution was that he supplied the Shuwair workshop with his own Arabic types and thereby gave the monastery its really valuable asset”. (Dagmar Glass and Geoffrey Roper, ‘The printing of Arabic books in the Arab world’ in Middle Eastern Languages and the Print Revolution, Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, 2002, pp. 179–180)
Bibliographic references: Nasrallah, 31; Louis Sheikho, 40-41; Silvestre de Sacy, 1842, I, n° 1346 and pages 412-414.