Folio. 350 pp., woodcut device on title, blank leaf, woodcut printer’s device to title and a variant to verso of final leaf, ivory colour vellum binding of the period, professionally rebacked conserving original spine, hand written title on raised spine, binding rubbed, wear to edges, scattered foxing, first edition, ex-Typographia Sac. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, Excudebat Joseph David Luna, Maronita, Roma, 1642.

Synopsis

This is the rare first edition. The work is well-printed, with the Arabic Bible types by Joseph David De Luna, a nephew of the Archbishop of Damascus Serius Risius; he styled himself in Arabic “Joseph of Mount Lebanon, from the town of Baslukith”, when he also printed Guadagnolus’s Apologia of 1637. (See Graf IV 252; Schnurrer 247). Guadagnoli was the first Italian nominated as professor of Arabic at the Collegium Sapientiae, Heidelberg in 1642. He was instrumental in the printing of the Arabic Bible.
In the preface the author explains how his grammar serves a special purpose. The Arabic Bible was at the time printed in a non-vocalised form in order to make it accessible to the Arabic speaking world, and with this in mind, Guadagnoli paid special attention to the ratio and for the purpose of writing, and to the essential of metrics.
In the grammar we find printed for the first time the famous metrical poem “Carmen Chazregiacum” (al-Qasida al-Hazragiya) on pp. 286-329, and the “Carmen de invocationibus” (al-Qasida al-Minadat), printed according to Guadagnoli after a manuscript from the library of Della Valle. The latter poem was also edited by G. Kuypers in 1745.
At the end of his grammar, Guadagnoli printed also a few lines of an Arabic poem by the well-known 15th century Maronite theologian Gabriel Ibn Al-Qula’i. (See Graf III 331). We can trace only two other copies at auction since 1981, including the Camille Aboussouan copy (Sotheby’s, 17th June, 1993, lot 407).
Bibliographic references: Schnurrer; Bibliotheca Arabica, n°72 – Smitskamp: Philologia Orientalis, 220; Amaduzzi, p. 11.