Van Dyck

1913 · Best.-Nr. 41439 — in Arabic: Beirut: The American Printing Press 1913. 8vo 18.5 cm 7.5" 920 295 pp. The Van Dyck translation of the Bible into Arabic first appeared in 1865 and remained the standard version used by Arabs for a century. This edition from the American Printing Press is => an all-Arabic production with the only English appearing in it being a small-print line "Bible Third Font 282" on the title-page at "rear". Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck 1818–95 was born at Kinderhook NY and educated at Jefferson Medical College Philadelphia receiving his M.D. in 1839. The following year the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent him to Lebanon as a medical missionary for the Dutch Reformed Church and he remained in the Middle East for the rest of his life with only an occasional trip to the U.S. Van Dyck became fluent in Arabic wrote extensively in that language and taught medicine and other subjects: "He was professor of pathology and internal medicine in the medical school of the newly founded Syrian Protestant College which later became the American University of Beirut. He also taught astronomy in its literary section directed its observatory and meteorological station as well as the mission press and edited its weekly journal al-Nashran. He wrote Arabic textbooks on chemistry internal medicine physical diagnosis and astronomy publishing some of them at his own expense" Wikipedia. WorldCat records at least three editions of the Arabic Bible from the American Printing Press in 1913 each with a different pagination. Publisher's brown cloth spine stamped in gilt with title in Arabic and with blind stamping to covers and spine; some chipping to cloth around spine and at edges. Printed on very thin paper occasionally showing a short tear or a crease but clean and untattered. A very good copy. The American Printing Press hardcover books