An Arabic New Testament used in a Cross-Cultural Middle Eastern world
"Quator Evangelia". Arabic manuscript of the gospels.
Folio (210 x 306 mm). Decorated manuscript on paper. 107 (instead of 109) ff. with catchwords on every leaf. 21 lines per extensum in black naskh, in a single, practised hand, rubrics and diacritics in red, each Gospel opening with a lengthy red rubric. Contemporary and later marginalia by other hands in Arabic and Western Syriac. Contemporary 'alla greca' binding of blind-stamped dark calf over wooden boards. Stored in custom-made, felt-lined black half-morocco case.
€ 65,000.00
An early 18th century Levantine codex containing the four gospels in Arabic. The manuscript follows the Alexandrian (or Egyptian) Vulgate, a gospel translation widely used during the second millennium by Arabic-speaking Christians in the East. Marginal annotations give evidence of intensive personal and community use for spiritual and liturgical purposes by Arabic- and Syriac-speaking Greek Orthodox Christians in a Middle Eastern Catholic monastic environment.
Several paratextual liturgical notes attribute individual chapters to a specific feast or liturgical event, a practice common in gospel manuscripts that follow the canonical sequence but are used as lectionaries. In this case, the copyist has added marginal notes to inform the priest of the appropriate reading (lection) assigned for the current day or feast. Some of these are personal notes that serve as bookmarks or conventional titles to facilitate finding a pericope; others link specific chapters to the Byzantine liturgical calendar as celebrated by Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox Christians.
Additional annotations, not in the copyist's hand, connect this manuscript with a Syriac-speaking community, suggesting a co-existence of Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox and Syriac identities. Some of these inscriptions reflect a specific liturgical use in a Syriac ecclesiastic environment; others are in Garshuni (Syrian-written Arabic) as used mainly by Maronites or sometimes Hacobites who spoke Arabic but could not write it - a phenomenon that agrees well with use of the manuscript in a Catholic monastery which would attract local oriental Christians, regardless of their degree of literacy.
Manuscripts like this are of significant rarity on the market, with exclusively Christian Biblical texts in Arabic being last recorded by the Schoenberg database as sold in 2005 (14th or 15th century Gospels in Arabic, sold by Bauman Oriental Books), and before that as long ago as 1926 (a 16th-century Arabic-Armenian Bible, sold by Anderson Galleries, 26 March, lot 518), and 1921 (late 14th century Gospels, offered by Sothebys, 18 April, lot 315). The Melikian collection has an 18th century Ottoman-Arabic translation of the Gospels, exhibited in 2014 in The Bible Crossing Religions and Languages.
We gratefully acknowledge the help of Dr Elie Dannaoui, Associate professor of Church History at St John Institute of Orthodox Theology at the University of Balamand, Lebanon, in cataloguing this manuscript.
Probably written in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem between the end of the 17th century and the first third of the 18th century. A marginal annotation on fol. 28v is dated 1733. Then and/or later in a library of Carmelite monks resident in the Near East, most probably from the monastery of Stella Maris, Haifa, with the order's ink stamps with their arms and inscription "Terra Santa Monte Carmelo Maria" on second and last pages, and with "Quator Evangelia" added in a 19th-century hand in ink to the head of the front end-leaf. After departing the Near East in the 13th century, the Carmelites returned in 1631 to found this house, rebuilding it in its present form in the 19th century. The book was probably then brought back to Europe by a member of their community, where presumably the two German woodcuts showing the Virgin Mary were added to the front pastedown and front end-leaf, and a small blue collection ticket with "Sc6" was pasted to its front cover. Latterly in a French private collection.
Collation: [i-vii]8 (-1, 8), [viii]6, [ix]10, [x]6, [xi]8, [xii]6, [xiii]10, [xiv]8 (-8). Text opens with the Gospel of Matthew (fol. 1r), followed by those of Mark (31v), Luke (50r), and finally John (84v); end of Luke 1 omitted by scribe. Binding tooled with flowers, circles and double fillet on both boards, spine with repeating pattern of four seed pods inside each of four compartments separated by large double thongs.
Wants the 7th leaf (end of Matt. 7 and beginning of Matt. 8) and the final leaf of text (ends with John 21:12); a lacking first leaf of the first quire may have contained introductory material to Matthew. Some spots and staining throughout, worming mostly confined to margins; first few leaves have marginal damage, not touching the text. More noticeable damage to first leaf and pastedowns, but overall in fair and solid condition. Binding insignificantly rubbed at extremeties; a professional repair to the head of spine; overall solid.
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