New Open-Access Book: Reconstructing the Disiecta Membra of Köprülü, Mehmed Âsım Bey, 1 bis

 George Kiraz, Sabine Schmidke and Alexander Treiger, Reconstructing the Disiecta Membra of Köprülü, Mehmed Âsım Bey, 1 bis (Gorgias Press, 2026)

 

A facsimile edition of Ms. Istanbul, Köprülü Library, Mehmed Âsım Bey 1 bis, a composite Christian Arabic manuscript with contents including Arabic New Testament witnesses, a lectionary, and Christian Arabic doctrinal, legal, and canonical texts. Beyond its textual contents, the manuscript provides important evidence for the circulation, fragmentation, and reassembly of Christian Arabic books in the Ottoman period, as well as for the precarious survival of Christian Arabic materials within Islamic library collections.

Download the book for free here.

 

 

New Open-Access Book- Books Printed for Arab Christians in the 18th Century: A Descriptive Catalog

Archimandrite Policarp Chiţulescu and Yulia Petrova, Books Printed for Arab Christians in the 18th Century: A Descriptive Catalog (De Gruyter, 2026)

About this book

This catalog provides descriptive records of 54 Arabic books printed in Eastern Europe and the Arabic-speaking communities in the Ottoman East during the 18^th century. It offers a thorough overview of the connections established through printing between the Romanian principalities and Arabic-speaking Christians in the eastern Mediterranean during this period. The catalog emphasizes the social progress that the printing culture brought to the Near East, to which Romanians made a significant contribution. The catalog also addresses the historical context of these connections and the printing activities of several prominent political and ecclesiastical figures. The books presented here are pivotal to the cultural history of the Ottoman East. They have been particularly significant in the context of conserving Byzantine-based Christianity in Arabic-speaking provinces in the region. Additionally, these books contributed to the standardization of Arabic liturgical texts and greatly influenced Christian Arabic literature. This catalog will be of interest to historians of the Arabic printed book, researchers of Arab Christian communities under Ottoman rule, as well as librarians and antiquarians because it will enable them to accurately identify and describe the 18^th-century Arabic editions in their collections.

Author / Editor information

Policarp Chiţulescu, Romanian Patriarchate, Bucharest, Romania; Yulia Petrova, Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

 

Download for free here. 

New Book- Philip Stokes, The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature

Philip Stokes, The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2026).

Abstract

This Element examines the forms of Arabic used by Christians during the early Islamic period in theological treatises and Bible translations. Linguistic analysis of these texts not only clarifies the nature of early Islamic Arabic but also illuminates Christian institutional and intellectual culture. The study challenges common views that Christian authors wrote either flawed Classical Arabic or in substandard
registers. Instead, it demonstrates their Arabic was typical of the early Islamic period. The Element identifies linguistic differences between theological treatises and biblical translations, connecting these to pre-Islamic monastic practices where Greek served theological discourse while Christian Palestinian Aramaic – a local spoken variety written in adapted Syriac script – was used to write texts for lay purposes. After the Muslim conquests, Arabic became the appropriate language for both genres. Christians adapted Arabic, writing deftly and creatively to their literary activities, employing language suited to different audiences and demonstrating sophisticated engagement with emerging Arabic literary registers and traditions.

 This book can be downloaded for free for the next two weeks here. 

Fr Sidney Griffith: Memory Eternal!

Fr Sidney Griffith was virtually the founder of the study of Christian Arabic in English, both as a writer, teacher and interlocutor to many. He will be very deeply missed. 

His department has shared the following announcement with the NASCAS mailing list:

I write with a heavy heart to share the news that Fr. Sidney H. Griffith, Professor Emeritus of Semitics at the Catholic University of America, passed away on July 1, 2026 in Maryland. 

Fr. Griffith was born in 1938 in Gaithersburg, Maryland where he attended school until 1952 when he began studies at the John Carroll High School in Washington, DC. He subsequently joined the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity and attended the congregation’s minor seminary in Alabama and major seminary in Monroe, Virginia. He was ordained as a priest in 1965. 

In 1965, Fr. Griffith began the first of his many years at the Catholic University of America by earning an M.S. in Library Science and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology the following year (1966). Fr. Griffith then began studies in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures where he would remain for the rest of his career. He earned his PhD in Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures in 1978. Fr. Griffith joined the faculty of Catholic University in 1977 and was promoted to ordinary professor in 2001. He held this position until his retirement in 2014. 

Fr. Griffith was internationally renowned as a scholar of Syriac and early Arabic Christianity. His numerous scholarly works include studies of the famous Syriac thinker Ephrem the Syrian, early Syriac asceticism, early Arabic Christian theology, and interreligious dialogue and spirituality. Fr. Griffith was the author of over 130 articles and seven books, including the award-winning The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (2008); The Bible in Arabic (2013); Yahyā ibn ʿAdī, The Reformation of Morals: A Parallel English-Arabic Text Translated and Introduced (1992); and A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons Written in Arabic by Theodore Abû Qurrah, Bishop of Harrān (c. 755–c. 830 A. D.) (1997). His Marquette Lecture of 1997 was published as Faith Adoring the Mystery: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian.

Numerous institutions have recognized Fr. Griffith for his work. He was awarded fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Institute for Advanced Studies. From 1986 to 1988 he was President of the North American Patristics Society; he also served as president of the Byzantine Studies Conference (1990–1991) and of the American Oriental Society (2007–2008). In 2009, he received a Rumi Peace Award for his work in interfaith dialogue. For over a decade he was a member of the Eastern Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue and was a frequent participant in various forms of Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Fr. Griffith was a pillar of the Catholic University of America community, having served as chair of the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures for three terms, as director of the Center for the Study of Early Christianity from 1984–1999, and as secretary of the Institute of Christian Oriental Research for decades. He trained numerous graduate students in the languages and literatures of the Christian Near East, many of whom went on to become notable scholars in the field.

Colleagues, students, and friends remember Fr. Griffith for his engaging conversations and his scholarly generosity. Fr. Griffith was always eager to work through a text with students or colleagues, sharing their curiosity and offering insights from his immense learning. His generosity, knowledge, and humility will be missed by all who had the privilege of knowing him. 

 

Ecumenism in 18th Century Egypt: Mas'ad Nashw and the Copts

 

The descendent of an old Coptic family who at some point had settled in Damascus and converted to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, the priest Masʿad Nashw first came to prominence in the circle of Arabic-speaking intellectuals in the entourage of the Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch. In 1744, he arrived in Egypt where he became oikonomos of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, managing the small church's day-to-day affairs during the frequent absences of the patriarch.

 

The Orthodox of Egypt were subject to the same intense pressures from Latin missionaries as their brethren in Syria, so in order to protect his flock, Masʿad wrote a large number of apologetic treatises and addressed pastoral issues caused by the missionaries in his impressive homiletic corpus. He also worked closely with the Greek theologian Eustratios Argenti, translating some of his works into Arabic, which Sylvester then printed in Wallachia.

 

In contrast to his strident opposition to the missionaries, who posed an acute existential threat to his flock, Mas'ad takes a very nuanced but sympathetic attitude toward the Copts. This is expressed in detail in a letter he wrote to one of his parishioners who asked him to explain the difference between the two communities, which, as he says, "on the one hand isn't anything at all, but on the other hand is very great..."

 

This article presents Mas'ad's previously-unpublished letter for the first time in an English translation.

Read it here. 

New Open-Access Book: The Role of Italian Presses in Early Arabic Printing

 

The Role of Italian Presses in Early Arabic Printing:

Third Volume of Collected Works of the TYPARABIC Project

 

Edited by Octavian Negoiță and Ioana Feodorov

About this book:

This volume contains the proceedings of the fourth TYPARABIC Conference, held in Venice between May 27–29, 2025, together with a selection of additional studies on the religious and intellectual history of Arabic-speaking communities in the Ottoman Levant, that resulted from earlier team conferences. It documents a significant moment of scholarly exchange while offering a varied contribution to the study of Arabic print culture and Church history.

The conference papers concentrate on the Italian connection in the development of Arabic printing in 18^th-century Europe and the Near East. They analyze the technical, commercial, and ecclesiastical networks that linked Italian printing centers – above all Venice – with Levantine and Eastern European presses, emphasizing the circulation of type, texts, and craftsmen. The additional contributions expand the thematic scope of the volume by addressing theological debates and cultural interactions within Arabic-speaking Christianity. Through focused case studies, they place Eastern Christians within the wider Ottoman and Mediterranean contexts, highlighting patterns of exchange, adaptation, and intellectual continuity. Taken together, the essays provide a coherent and methodologically rigorous account of the dialogue between print, theology, and cross-cultural connections in the 18^th-century Ottoman Levant.

 

 

The book can be downloaded for free here. 

 

 

Antioch's First Encounter with Latin Missionaries: The Response of Anastasius ibn Mujalla

 Antioch's First Encounter with Latin Missionaries: The Response of Anastasius ibn Mujalla

In the early 1580s, Jesuits initially sent to the Levant to reform the Maronite Church attempted to exploit divisions in the Patriarchate of Antioch to their own advantage. This resulted in a series of exchanges where Latin missionaries attempted to convince the Orthodox to accept the Council of Florence and the Gregorian calendar, while the Orthodox were forced, for the first time in a century and a half, to define their faith and identity in relation to Rome and the wider world.

 

After returning from a journey to Russia, the Patriarch Joachim Daw tasked his disciple, the Metropolitan of Tripoli Anastasius ibn Mujalla with writing a detailed response. While Ibn Mujalla’s response relies heavily on earlier Byzantine and Christian Arabic apologetic literature, he places his community, which he calls “the Melkite Rum,” within a globe-spanning communion made up of “Rum, Russians, Georgians, Wallachians, Serbs, Moldavians, Turks [i.e., the Turkish-speaking Orthodox of Anatolia], Arabs and others in various places,” who, “despite the remoteness of their countries from each other and the differences in their language” are united in dogma, ritual and practice. Moreover, Anastasius places great emphasis on Antioch’s Petrine and Apostolic foundation to demonstrate that Rome cannot claim apostolic or Petrine support for any innovations.

 

Read the entire text in my translation here.