Arabe

1698 · rif. H4GD9LIIY5ST — Padova: Typographia Seminaria 1698. Blind-tooled vellum ca. 1800 reusing and retooling vellum from a slightly earlier blind-tooled binding sewn on 6 double cords each board with a large scrollwork centrepiece over traces of the old one in a panel design made of fillets and corner pieces with the title finely lettered in pen and ink in the 2nd of 7 compartments the old title still faintly visible underneath it and the old volume number “VIII” faintly visible in the 3rd compartment. Folio 35.5 x 25 cm. With 2 title pages 1 primary and 4 secondary divisional titles in volume 1 more than a dozen woodcut head- and tailpieces plus numerous repeats and dozens of woodcut decorated initials about 9 series plus numerous repeats. Set in roman italic and Arabic types 3 sizes of Arabic with incidental Greek and Hebrew. 2 volumes bound as 1. The first scholarly printed Quran prepared by the anti-Islamic Catholic Ludovico Marracci with a much more accurate Arabic text than any previously printed and the first accurate Latin translation also including extensive notes based on the Islamic commentaries as well as the editor's extensive "refutations" of each sutra. Each sura is given first in Arabic then in Latin translation followed by notes and then the refutation. The entire first volume of about 430 pages is taken up with preliminary matter including a 24-page life of Muhammad one of the first detailed biographies ever printed and again more accurate than its predecessors an 8-page profession of faith with the Arabic and Latin in parallel columns and additional commentaries and introductory matter. The fact that this edition was produced explicitly as an attempt to refute the views of Islam has naturally led Islamic scholars to dismiss it but both the Arabic text and the Latin translation were far better than any previously printed and had no serious rival until the Leipzig edition of 1834. The commentaries also made a great deal of Islamic scholarship available to a European audience for the first time and both the Arabic and the Latin text influenced nearly every edition for the next 150 years.With two bookplates and an occasional early manuscript note and a few letters or numbers inscribed in the foot margin of one leaf. With a tear running into the text of one leaf repaired but otherwise in very good condition. With generous margins. The boards are slightly bowed and there is a small tear repaired at the foot of the spine. A ground-breaking work of Quranic scholarship a valuable source for the study of the Quran and an essential source for European views of Islam.l Cat. Bibl. A.-R. Courbonne dont la vent . 1er février 1842 30 this copy; A. Hamilton Europe and the Arab world 34; Schnurrer 377; O. A. Sheikh Al-Shabab “The place of Marracci’s Latin translation of the Holy Quran: .” in: Journal of King Saud University: language & tanslation 13 2001 pp. 57-74; USTC 1736471/1737617/1748538; not in Atabey; Blackmer; Philologia orientalis but cited in 225g 360a 380b 381c. Typographia Seminaria, hardcover