News

On 21 April 2023, our colleague Oana Iacubovschi presented a paper entitled “Between East and West. The Engravings of Athanasios Dabbās’s Aleppo Editions of the Gospel Book (1706), the Sermons of Athanasius (1711) and the Octoechos (1711)” at the international conference “Metamorphoses”/Old Art Module, hosted by the Institute of Art Studies in Sofia.

On April 13-14, 2023, Dr. Hasan Çolak, a Senior Researcher in the TYPARABIC project team, was the guest of the DFG Priority Programme Transottomanica at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, where he contributed to the workshop Transottoman Cultures of Expertise the paper “Multilingualism as a form of transcultural expertise: A study of multilingual Ottoman Muslim intellectuals in the eighteenth century”.

Fr Gabriel Hachem, Professor of Theology and editor-in-chief of the ‘Proche Orient Chrétien’ journal published by the University of St. Joseph in Beirut, Lebanon, visited the ERC Project Center on Thursday 16 March 2023. A great friend of our project team, he brought with him books from Beirut that are useful sources for our research. He discussed with the project PI, Ioana Feodorov, about the team works advance and plans for the conference next year

On 28 February 2023, the TYPARABIC project team received the visit of Deacon Alexandru Briciu, editor with Ziarul Lumina, the daily newspaper of the Patriarchate of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Fr Alexandru recently interviewed Dr Ioana Feodorov, PI of the TYPARABIC project, disseminating in the pages of Ziarul Lumina the recent outcomes of this ERC project developed in Bucharest.

In February 2023, our colleague Nicholas Bishara, junior researcher in the TYPARABIC project, visited the “Lucian Blaga” University Library in Cluj-Napoca and the Romanian Academy Library, Cluj-Napoca Branch. In these libraries Nicholas was interested in the collection of Arabic manuscripts and old books, of direct interest for the topic of the ERC TYPARABIC project. He has also documented aspects related to the circulation of old printed books in the area of the Romanian Lands and the Ottoman Empire, which are part of the research corpus of the TYPARABIC project.

The most recent issue of the newspaper ‘Lumina’ includes a substantial interview that Deacon Alexandru Briciu took to Dr Ioana Feodorov, PI of the TYPARABIC project. The full text is available at the link below.
Antoaneta Victoria Folea and Laura Chirilă from the National Contact Point Horizon Europe / ERC withing the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) visited the TYPARABIC Project Center and discussed with Ioana Feodorov, PI of the TYPARABIC Project, about the challenges and opportunities of running such an ERC-funded project.
On 31 January 2023, Dr Ioana Feodorov, PI of the ERC TYPARABIC project, received the ‘Award of Excellence for Outstanding Achievement in Social Studies and Humanities’ from the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitisation at the first edition of the Romanian Research Gala 2023.
Dr Ioana Feodorov, PI of the ERC TYPARABIC project, is one of the eight Romanian researchers (from Romanian and international institutions) nominated for the Research and Innovation Award, Experienced Researchers category, to be awarded by the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitisation at the first edition of the Romanian Research Gala 2023. The award will recognise outstanding research results, applied projects and the potential to anticipate and address future challenges. Dr Feodorov is the only representative of the humanities in this category.
The award ceremony will take place on 31 January 2023 at the Romanian Athenaeum.
https://galacercetarii.research.gov.ro/
A new exhibition in which the Typarabic Project is a partner is on display at the National History Museum of Romania from 14 December 2022 to 8 January 2023): ‘Caligrafie arabă în colecții din România’ (Arabic Caligraphy in Romanian Collections). The exhibition will be opened today (14 December 2022), on the occasion of the celebration of the World Arabic Language Day, an event organized by the Council of Arab Ambassadors in Bucharest and the National History Museum of Romania. In the introduction, Ioana Feodorov, PI of the Typarabic project, will give a talk on ‘Printing in Arabic for the Christians in the Near East: Bucharest, Aleppo, Istanbul, Iași and Beirut”.
On Wednesday 7 December 2022, during the memorial reunion held at the Library of the Holy Synod in Bucharest, Ioana Feodorov, the PI of the ERC TYPARABIC project, talked about the roads and works of Fr. Archim. Sofian Boghiu in Lebanon, the frescoes that he created and painted in Deyr el-Harf and Brummana, which include icons of Romanians saints, and the high esteem and fond memories that he left behind with his Lebanese hosts.
Among other speakers were HH Qa’is Sadeq, Patriarchal Vicar, Bishop of Erzurum, HH Timotei Prahoveanul, Bishop-Vicar of Bucharest, and Fr. Archim. Policarp Chițulescu, director of the Library of the Holy Synod.

In late November 2022, Alina Kondratiuk, senior researcher in the Typarabic team, visited Iași for a research trip at the ‘Mihai Eminescu’ Central University Library. At BCU Iași, Alina studied some of the early printed books preserved in the Library’s Special Collections Department. An art historian, Alina was also interested in the circulation of artistic models and patterns between the Ukrainian and South-Eastern European space. The Golia, Cetățuia and Trei Ierarhi monasteries are important case studies in this regard.

 

The TYPARABIC project contributed to the exhibition dedicated to Lebanon at the National Museum of History of Romania in terms of exhibits and logistics.
The exhibition was launched on 24 November and was honored by the attendance of a great number of foreign ambassadors and many friends of Lebanon from all walks of life.
The exhibition is open until 4 December. More details are available on the website of the National Museum of History of Romania:

On 14 October, Dr Joshua Mugler gave a lecture at the Romanin Academy Library, Cluj-Napoca Branch

On Friday 14 October 2022, Dr. Joshua Mugler, expert in manuscript and old book cataloguing at the Hill Museum and Manuscripts Library, Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA, who has visited Romania at the invitation of the ERC Typarabic team members, gave a lecture at the Romanian Academy Library, Cluj-Napoca Branch. The audience included bibliographers and antiquarian specialists, and members of the ERA Typarabic team and potential Romanian and foreign collaborators attended the lecture on zoom. The introduction was made by Dr. Ioana Feodorov, PI of the Typarabic project.

On Monday and Tuesday (10 – 11 October 2022), Dr. Joshua Mugler, cataloguer at HMML, St John’s College, MN, USA,
has given two lectures at the ERC TYPARABIC Project Center at the Academy House.

Dr Joshua Mugler is a specialist in Oriental and modern languages (Arabic, Syriac, Biblical and Medieval Greek, Coptic, Biblical Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, French, German, etc.) and he catalogues Oriental manuscripts for Virtual HMML, the world’s richest virtual collection of Oriental texts, managed by Saint John’s College, Minnesota (USA). His expertise covers areas of major interest for the tasks undertaken by the TYPARABIC project team: sacred texts, history of Eastern religions and churches, Christian-Muslim relations, modern Near Eastern history, etc.
The lectures and consultations included in the program of his visit have covered different topics and are addressed to TYPARABIC team members and guests; they allowed the TYPARABIC team members and guests to acquire new skills in codicology and paleography for oriental languages and the field of Arabic manuscripts and antiquarian books, which is the main theme of the project hosted by ISSEE.
The two lectures and consultations were given for members of the core-team and collaborators in the ERC TYPARABIC Project Center at the Academy House. Other members of the project and academic collaborators attended the presentations via zoom.

⸭⸭⸭

⸭ On 5 October 2022, Ioana Feodorov, PI of the Typarabic ERC project, published in “Ziarul Lumina” a popular science article with information about the Typarabic project and the importance of studying printing in the Romanian principalities and the Near East. The full text is available at this link: Rolul tipografilor din Țările Române la întemeierea primelor tiparnițe ale arabilor creștini (ziarullumina.ro)

⸭ Hasan Çolak has been promoted to the grade of Associate Professor of Ottoman Institutions and Civilisation at the Department of History at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, Turkey.

⸭The Project has, since May 9, 2022, its own Facebook page, called TYPARABIC.

⸭The Principal Investigator, dr. Ioana Feodorov, has recently signed a Series Editor Agreement with the prestigious editing house De Gruyter for five volumes that will be authored by members of the Core Team. The series title is Early Arabic Printing in the East. The volumes will present the outputs of the Project research for the years 2022-2026.

⸭ The TYPARABIC Project has graciously received from the Host Institution a dedicated room in the House of the Romanian Academy, which, owing to the budget available from the ERC project grant (Contract no. 883219 – 2019 – Horizon 2020), we have recently endowed with IT equipment, bookcases, and an emerging library of research sources (books, periodicals, exhibition catalogues, language tools, etc.). In time, the room will also host the printed research outcomes of the project Core Team members. Photos taken by Oana Iacubovschi on March 24, 2022, are available in the PHOTO GALLERY.