Thursday, June 22

PANEL 1

1. Feras Krimsti, “Local printing in Arabic according to German travelers to the Levant in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries”.

A number of German scholars and learned men travelled to the Levant in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In their travelogues, they reflect on the importance, accessibility and availability of works in Arabic printed by Christians in local contexts in the Levant. They also describe their activities as collectors of such books. This paper focuses on three German travelers who, in their travel accounts, shed light on local printing culture: Jonas Korte (1683–1747), a book shop owner and publisher who travelled through the Levant between 1737 and 1739; Stephan Schultz (1714–1776), a Protestant missionary from Halle, who travelled through the Ottoman Empire between 1752 and 1756; and the natural scholar Ulrich Jasper Seetzen
(1767–1811) who, in 1803, set out on a journey through the Ottoman Empire. A paradigm shift can be observed: whereas Korte’s and Schultz’s interest in local printing is inscribed in their engagement with religion, Seetzen saw the potential of locally printed books to contribute to the production of scientific knowledge. In a scholarly article published in 1805, Seetzen describes printing and printed works in the Levant in detail to an academic audience. The printed works Seetzen acquired, in addition to manuscripts, are today preserved in the collections of the Gotha Research Library. This unique collection of printed works sheds light on Levantine printing culture and gives scholars a unique view of the printed books available in Aleppo and Mount Lebanon at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

2. Joseph Moukarzel, “Eighteenth century Arabic books in the USEK Library: The Khenchara Collection”.

The Khenchara Collection is a treasure trove of early Arabic printing in Lebanon and the Middle East, showcasing its cultural and historical significance. The history of printing in the region can be traced back to the seventeenth century, when the Monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya in Northern Lebanon housed the first printing press in the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire. It produced in 1610 the bilingual Psalter in Syriac and Garshuni.
Abdullah al-Zakher (1684–1748), a visionary in Arabic printing, after moving from Aleppo, founded the first Arabic printing press in Lebanon in 1731 at the Monastery of Saint Yuḥanna al-Sabegh in al-Khenchara. In 1733, al-Zakher made a profound impact on the world of printing by publishing 800 copies of Mīzān al‑zamān wa-qisṭās abadīyat al-insān, an Arabic translation made by the Jesuit Pierre Fromage of the Italian version of the original Spanish book of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg Diferencia entre lo temporal y enterno… This was the start of Arabic printing in Lebanon and a landmark moment in the eighteenth-century literary revival.
Therefore, the Khenchara Collection is a unique representation of early Arabic printing, including religious, theological, and liturgical books, translations and original works by Al‑Zakher, among others. This collection stands out for its intricate calligraphy, exceptional craftsmanship and ornate embellishments such as high-quality paper, black ink, Indian numbering and annotations, drawings and colorful illustrations.
This contribution will shed light on the Khenchara Collection held at USEK Library that contains 29 titles, with a total of 54 copies, spanning from 1733 to 1899, including the first printed book Mīzān al-Zamān (1733–1734) and the rare third edition of Kitāb al-Ukṭū’īkhūs (the Octoechos) published in 1799.

3. Nino Kavtaria, “Oriental printed books in the collections of the ‘K. Kekelidze’ Georgian National Center for Manuscripts and Old Books in Tbilisi”.

The Georgian National Center for Manuscripts and Old Books holds an important collection of Arabic manuscripts and printed books. The chronological frame of the execution of the manuscripts and printed books varies between the thirteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Their content is mainly theological and includes the Qur’an and teachings related to the Qur’an, rituals and prayers, collections of hadiths, philosophy, Sufism, etc. Books of grammar, logic, and rhetoric stand out among the secular works. Relatively few books with medical, astronomical-astrological, literary and other contents have survived. The origins of these printed books and manuscripts are diverse and show connections with various important scribal centers and printing presses of the Arabic world. These printed books and manuscripts are not distinguished by their artistic decoration. Their decoration is limited to unwan-type ornament and frames of different colors. The purpose of this contribution is to review and survey the Arabic printed books and manuscripts preserved in the Georgian National Center for Manuscripts and Old Books, to show their origin, place of execution and significance.

4. Mircea-Gheorghe Abrudan, “Timotei Cipariu, the first scholar of Arabic and collector of Oriental books in Transylvania”.

Transylvania, a region located in the center of Romania, has given famous personalities and scholars to Romanian and European history and culture. Among these personalities is the Greek-Catholic canon, Timotei Cipariu (1805–1887), a renowned linguist, philologist and accomplished polyhistorian. He studied theology and philosophy at the Greek-Catholic gymnasium and seminary in Blaj, where he then worked as a teacher and director for nearly half a century. He did systematic research on the history of the Romanian language, philology and comparative linguistics, which is why he is considered by some exegetes to be the ‘father of Romanian philology’. He was a founding member and vice-president of the most important Romanian cultural associations: ASTRA of the Romanians from Transylvania, and the Romanian Academic Society, later the Romanian Academy. An eminent student and teacher, endowed with a phenomenal memory, he was characterized by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, showing a special interest in philology and working as a publicist, translator of biblical, philosophical and historical texts, author of grammar school textbooks and publisher. He was a true polyglot, knowing, in addition to his native Romanian, Hungarian and German, commonly spoken in Transylvania of that time, as well as several classical languages (Greek, Latin and Hebrew) and modern European ones (French, Italian, Spanish and English). Curiosity directed him to the study of oriental languages (Turkish, Arabic and Persian), acquiring and collecting throughout his life old Romanian and Western books and manuscripts, incunabula and oriental manuscripts. Due to these concerns, he was elected, on May 1, 1846, an ordinary member of the German Oriental Society (Die deutsche morgenländische Gesellschaft) in Halle-Leipzig. In his library, kept at the Cluj‑Napoca branch of the Romanian Academy Library, there are about 160 Oriental manuscripts, of which 115 are in Arabic and 36 are in Turkish and Persian. The collection of Arabic manuscripts of Timotei Cipariu is the subject of my presentation.

Friday, June 23

PANEL 2

1. Simon Mills, “Athanasios Dabbās and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge’s Arabic Bibles”.

My paper will explore the little-known connections between Athanasios III Dabbās (1647–1724), Patriarch of Antioch, and England. Specifically, it will show how the history of Athanasios’ Arabic Psalter, printed at Aleppo in 1706, was linked to a comparable project two decades later in London: the Anglican Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge’s project to produce and distribute an Arabic Psalter for the use of the Eastern Christian churches. The SPCK’s Arabic Psalter is usually attributed to the Damascene Christian, Solomon Negri
(c. 1665–1727). However, this obscures a more complex history, involving Athanasios, an unusually learned English merchant, and long-standing relationships between England and the Greek Church established by the English Levant Company and its chaplains in Syria.

2. John-Paul Ghobrial, “Printing between Aleppo and Rome:
Evidence from the Catholic missions”.

This paper offers a view of some of the interests and discussions of printing taking place among the Catholic missions in the Ottoman Empire in the late seventeenth century. In addition to evidence drawn from correspondence and missionary archives, this paper will draw on evidence from several works printed in this period, which speak to the lively intellectual milieu and exchanges between Eastern Christians and Catholic missionaries in Ottoman Syria.

3. Stefano Di Pietrantonio, “The circulation of Athanasios III Dabbās’ Faṣāḥa between Syria and Lebanon in the eighteenth–twentieth centuries”

In 1718, the metropolitan of Aleppo and then previous and future Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Athanāsyūs III Dabbās, translated from Greek into Arabic a handbook of rhetoric which he entitled (Kitāb) fī ṣināʿat al-faṣāḥa (Book of the Art of Rhetoric). Although it seems not to have had a significant impact on future developments in this field, this book enjoyed wide circulation between Syria and Lebanon for almost two centuries, since more than 50 copies were produced during this time, even spreading across the different Christian Eastern communities. The critical edition of a portion of the text, based on 30 manuscripts, is part of my ongoing PhD dissertation, which has also benefited from the crucial discovery, in recent years, of the Greek text behind its conception, opening the path for a better understanding of both the Arabic version and the broader project of the translator. Furthermore, as the presence of indices in several manuscripts, suggests, this work by Dabbās may have been intended for printing, given that the patriarch was known for his efforts to make religious and spiritual writings available to his audience. Mostly based on primary sources, this paper is an attempt to answer that question by surveying the extra-textual information found in the Faṣāḥa’s manuscript tradition.

4. Habib Ibrahim, “Sylvester of Antioch and his printing work as reflected in an eighteenth-century letter collection”

In the book Memorial Monseigeur Joseph Nasrallah, Rachid Haddad discusses the correspondence of Mūsa Ṭrābulsī, secretary of the Patriarch of Antioch Sylvester. It is found in one of the manuscripts of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Damascus [no. 300]. This correspondence is rich in historical information on important people from the circle of the Patriarch Sylvester. The study of its fifteen letters sheds light on the collaboration between Orthodox, Catholics and Maronites, and informs us about Silvester’s relationship with the printing press in the eighteenth century. This paper will present an overview of the contribution of this patriarch and his circle to Arabic printing, as revealed by Mūsa Ṭrābulsī’s collection of letters.

PANEL 3

1. Oana Iacubovschi, “The visual repertoire of Athanasios Dabbās’s printed books from Aleppo (1706–1711): Markers of cultural exchanges and personal connections”

After his successful collaboration in the early 1700s with the future Metropolitan Antim the Iberian, which resulted in the printing of the Greek-Arabic Book of Liturgies (1701) and the Horologion (1702) in the Wallachian presses of Snagov and Bucharest, Athanasios Dabbās returned to Aleppo, where he continued editing liturgical books as well as homiletical literature for the Arabic-speaking Christians of the Antiochian Church living under Ottoman dominion. In 1706, he published a Psalter and a Gospel Book and, a year later, the Acts of the Apostles, all of which show the strong influence of Wallachian presses in terms of layout and graphic repertoire. In fact, with a few notable exceptions, the visual content of each of these books is entirely based on the graphic material already used in the 1701 and 1702 publications. In the year that marked the inauguration of the Aleppo printing press, however, Dabbās released the Gospel with commentary, introducing, along with the Wallachian-inherited repertory, new types of vignettes and headpieces that would become characteristic of many of his Aleppo books. These new additions are closely affiliated with the contemporary Ottoman baroque aesthetic while also evoking a lineage of printed ornaments created in the West, most notably in the Netherlands, as well as in the workshops held by Eastern Christians who were printing their books in Western European countries. This paper will follow Athanasios Dabbās’s editorial projects chronologically, tracing the origin of various visual arts elements included in his works, illustrating how new material was incorporated alongside Wallachian material, commenting on reinterpretations of Wallachian engravings where they occurred, and focusing on the brand-new illustrations created for the 1711 Octoechos. Lastly, it will attempt to determine what stylistic and iconographic choices can reveal about the initiator of this six-year-long editorial venture and his recipients.

2. Alina Kondratiuk, “Patriarchs’ and bishops’ emblems on printed books: The transfer of models from West to East”

Frontispieces with stemmatic compositions were an important part of the Western and Eastern Churches’ early modern printed books. These compositions consisted of an image of a coat of arms and an epigram and were related to emblems because of their structure. Starting from the Renaissance, heraldry had an influence on their formation. During the late Renaissance and Baroque, with the growing role of emblematics in art, this influence was reversed. Stemmas and emblems were used to build panegyric concepts based on heraldic signs. Coats of arms of church hierarchs and their separate elements were included in the complex compositions of so-called ‘occasion works’ combining images and texts.
This paper examines the coats of arms of Catholic and Orthodox clergy, placed in the printed books of the second part of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It focuses in particular on the artistic features of heraldic images. The main object of research is the transfer of models from the West to the East.
A group of monuments representing heraldic engraving in Ukrainian, Romanian and Western European editions was studied. At that time, the Kyiv Сollegium and the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra print-shop acted as a transmission link for the transfer of ideas and images from the Catholic West to the Orthodox East. A number of emblematic and heraldic eulogies, primarily in honor of Metropolitan Peter Mohyla, were published there during the 1630s and 1640s. Following the example of these panegyric compositions some borrowings from the Western European collections of coats of arms were found. In addition to the panegyric works relating to Peter Mohyla himself, some works dedicated to his contemporaries and associates were mentioned. The compositions are considered in accordance with the rules for building coats of arms.

3.Anca Elisabeta Tatay, “The transfer of Ukrainian engraving models to presses of the Romanian Principalities (eighteenth century)”

eing sensitive to beauty, the Romanians were receptive to the numerous and diverse artistic tendencies that existed in different parts of Europe that they came in touch with due to their geographical position at the intersection of the main lines of communication between West and East, and so they assimilated them creatively, achieving a specific art with high spiritual values. Printing and woodcut engravings appeared in the Romanian area in early sixteenth century, as they did all across Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. If in the sixteenth century the Romanian art of printing and woodcutting was under Italian influence, towards the mid-seventeenth century German influence, via Ukrainian books and craftsmen who worked here, became manifest in Wallachia and Moldavia.
Among the Ukrainian woodcutters who illustrated Romanian books, we mention Ilia, Theodor Tișevici and Ivan Bakov. These engravers as well as some Romanian ones appealed to illustrated prints from Kyiv and L’viv. Both Ukrainian and Romanian books often comprise title page frames decorated with religious topics bordered by architectonic elements. Such illustration, with its decorative and explanatory function, reached a high artistic level during Constantin Brâncoveanu’s rule as prince of Wallachia (1688–1714). The xylographs influenced by Ukrainian art represent varied suggestive scenes with numerous expressive figures and architectonic and landscape fragments arranged on several plans. We must emphasize that the Romanian engravers did not appeal only to Ukrainian sources, but also to others which were assimilated more or less creatively. The influence of Ukrainian engravings on Romanian ones continued throughout the eighteenth century, which we intend to demonstrate in this paper. Without claiming to exhaust the subject we shall refer to the following engravers: Bakov (Buzău); Popa Mihai Râmniceanu Tipograf (Râmnic); Popa Constantin Tipograf Râmnicean (Bucharest); Grigorie, Sandul (Rădăuți, Iași); Mihail Strilbițchi (Iași, Dubăsari); Vlaicu (Blaj), Petru Papavici Tipograf Râmniceanu (Blaj).

4. David Neagu, “Icons of the Evangelists in Armenian printed books as models for the Eastern printers”

n 1512 the first Armenian book, Urbatʻagirkʻ (Friday prayers) was published in Venice by Hakob Mełapart. It was followed by other books published by Abgar Toxatecʻi, who also founded printing houses in Venice and Constantinople. Armenian manuscripts were used as models for new printings, as Armenian printers did not have other models. In this context, my paper studies the illustrations of the first Armenian printings and searches for similarities or differences between them and miniatures from Armenian manuscripts. Armenian miniaturists from the Middle Ages used a variety of styles to draw miniatures and there are some generally accepted styles which were linked to famous artists. I will attempt to see whether Hakob Mełapart, Abgar Toxatecʻi or other Armenian printers decided to copy a particular style of miniatures and use it in their printings. In order to be able to complete this analysis, I will focus on the portraits of the Four Evangelists, as there were established rules regarding how to paint them. This allows me to avoid miniatures that presented persons or objects that could have been represented in various manners according to the origins and education of the miniaturist.