This is a stolen book!

[BIBLIA ARABICA]. Evangelium Iesu Christi quemadmodum scripsit Mar Mattheus unus ex duodecim discipulis eius.

Rome, Typographia Medicea., 1591.

Folio (329 x 217 mm.), 9 - 462 pages, as issued without title and preliminaries. “Double-rule border on each page of text. One hundred forty-nine woodcuts, by repetition of sixty-seven blocks, approximately 100 x 125 mm. Fourteen of these blocks are signed with the monograms of Antonio Tempesta as designer and Leonardo Parasole as cutter, and four other blocks have Parasole's signature alone. An early attribution of the “LP” monogram to Luca Penni is incorrect. […] The Arabic types are those designed by Robert Granjon for Domenico Basa, and Granjon was employed by the Typographia as type designer in the last years of his life.” (Mortimer). Occasional light spotting, some browning; a good copy in contemporary limp vellum with manuscript title on spine.

First printing of the Gospels in the interlinear Arabic and Latin version, printed by the Typographia Medicea at the same time of the publication of the Gospels in Arabic only. The Arabic text, printed in Robert Granjon's famous large font, regarded as the earliest satisfactory Arabic type, is based on the Alexandrian Vulgate and is edited by Giovanni Battista Raimondi; the Latin version is by Leonardo Sionita. The book begins at page 9 without a title-page or any preliminary matters: “the reason for the apparent omission of pages of preliminaries is explained by Schnurrer quoting Bandini (C.F. de Schnurrer, Biblioteca Arabica, Amsterdam, 1968); G.B. Raimondi hoped to dedicate the volume to some great person, but failed to do so. In casting off the pagination, therefore, pp. 5-8 were omitted. The book was printed in Rome, but the unsold sheets went to Florence sometime about 1610, and any copy sold after that was sold in Florence. In the reissue of 1619 the gap in the pagination was seized upon and Schnurrer says that it has a leaf with dedication to Cardinal Madruzzi and a portrait together with the leaf "Typographus lectori" separately printed, without the colophon and with a different ornament. In all this makes four leaves, i.e. [8] pages. However it is clear that copies were made up on a very ad hoc basis. The sheets were again reissued in 1774.” (Sotheby's The Library of the Earls of Macclesfield Part VII: Bibles 1477-1739. 2006) This is the second book issued by the Typographia Medicea established in 1584 by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, later gran duke of Tuscany from 1587, supported by Pope Gregory XIII and directed by the Orientalist and mathematician Giovanni Battista Raimondi (1536?-1614). The ultimate purpose of the Typographia Medicea was, in the Pope's mind, the printing of sacred and religious texts in Oriental languages that were to be disseminated throughout the Mediterranean and the Near East. Antonio Tempesta (1555 - 1630), Italian painter and engraver of the early Baroque era, was the author of the illustrations of both editions of the Gospel in Arabic printed by the Typoraphia Medicea.

CNCE 5987; Darlow/Moule 1637; Mortimer 64 (note); Graesse II, 531.