Typarabic

05/06/2026

On the first day of the BIBLIO conference in Alba Iulia, Archim. Policarp Chițulescu presented the research he has conducted over five years in preparation for the eighth volume of the EAPE series, published with De Gruyter: "Books Printed for the Arab Christians in the 18th Century, a Descriptive Catalog". He co-authored this book with our colleague Yulia Petrova and the contribution of Ioana Feodorov. This book is one of the most significant results of the ERC-funded TYPARABIC project and is highly anticipated by the academic community in Romania and abroad. It will be released in August 2026 in Open Access and hardback. The day also included the launch of an outstanding exhibition of incunabula and other early printed books at Museikon, as well as visits to the splendid monuments of this age-old city, whose history spans many centuries, from the early Roman period to our days.

01/06/2026

Archim. Policarp Chițulescu and Ioana Feodorov will contribute on June 4 and 5 to the 20th edition of the National Conference BIBLIO - Bibliology and National Cultural Heritage - convened by the University „1 Decembrie 1918” and the National Museum of the Union in Alba Iulia. They will address topics outlining the outcomes and benefits of the ERC-funded TYPARABIC project as its completion approaches (June 30, 2026). Volume 8 of the De Gruyter series "Early Arabic Printing in the East", authored by Archim. Policarp Chițulescu and Yulia Petrova (with Ioana Feodorov), will be presented to the Romanian academic public for the first time.

30/05/2026

It's here! Volume 7 has reached us and has made us very happy. Not only is it a comprehensive collection of contributions on the themes and subthemes of our project but it also illustrates the variety of topics that the team and our guest speakers covered in Venice during the 4th TYPARABIC project. Moreover, these proceedings are released one year only after the conference, which is a feast in itself. A big thank you to all the contributors, and our deep gratitude to the De Gruyter team!
Free download here: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111373331/html

28/05/2026

TYPARABIC team members and their guests have participated in a colloquium convened by Peter Sragher, President of FITRALIT, the Translators' Branch of the Romanian Writers' Union, on Thursday, May 27, at the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest. Yulia Petrova discussed and read passages from EAPE-9, which is soon to be delivered to De Gruyter for publication. Her forthcoming book contains the prefaces and colophons of all the Arabic books in the corpus of the TYPARABIC project. Ioana Feodorov and Nicholas Bishara presented additional pages from the Arabic literature that connect Romanians with the Syrian Christians over the centuries. Razvan Bucuroiu, a PhD student of the Romanian Academy School of Advanced Studies, evoked the figure of the Syrian priest Emil Murakade, who spent 13 years in Bucharest between the two World Wars and, among other cultural feats, translated Eminescu's poetry into Arabic for the first time. The audience enjoyed Peter Sragher's lively and passionate interpretation of Eminescu's poem Rugaciunea unui dac, while our colleague Nicholas read the Arabic translation by Murakade published in the literary journal Convorbiri literare in 1939. Overall, the event was a celebration of the outcomes of the TYPARABIC project, which is nearing completion on June 30, and the age-old relations between the Romanian Principalities and the Arabic-speaking Christians of the Ottoman Empire.
Photos: Adorian Tarla.

21/05/2026

We are delighted to announce that our newest EAPE series volume, "The Role of Italian Presses in Early Arabic Printing: Third Volume of Collected Works of the TYPARABIC Project", edited by Ioana Feodorov and Octavian-Adrian Negoita, is now published. It can be downloaded from the publisher's website: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111373331/html

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 18th-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 18th-century Ottoman Levant.

20/05/2026

"Pages of Arabic Literature With and About Romanians: From Paul of Aleppo to Athanasius Dabbas and Sylvester of Antioch" | The 58th Literary Translation Colloquia, organized under the auspices of the Bucharest Branch – Literary Translation Section of the Romanian Writers’ Union.

Ioana Feodorov, the PI of the TYPARABIC project, will be joined by Yulia Petrova, Răzvan Bucuroiu, and Nicholas Bishara, for an evening dedicated to the Arabic premodern Christian literature. There will be presented pages from the Journal of Paul of Aleppo describing his journey through Moldavia, Wallachia, and Ukraine between 1653 and 1658. The Journal has been translated into Romanian by Ioana Feodorov (2014, 2016, 2020) and edited in Arabic together with Yulia Petrova. The guests will also present passages from the Prefaces of the Arabic books printed in Snagov, Bucharest, and Aleppo between 1701 and 1711 through the collaboration of Antim the Iberian and Athanasius Dabbas, Patriarch of Antioch, under the patronage of the Wallachian ruler Constantin Brâncoveanu. Written in a distinctive literary style, these Prefaces illuminate the relations between the Christian Arabs of Ottoman Syria and the people of Moldavia and Wallachia. They are part of a volume to be published in June 2026 by the De Gruyter, in both Arabic and English, as Volume 9 of the EAPE Series of the TYPARABIC project. This event will offer an exclusive preview of this book. The texts will be read both in their original Arabic, by Nicholas Bishara, and the Romanian translation.

09/05/2026

Archim. Policarp Chițulescu, our colleague on the TYPARABIC team, has visited a few important libraries while in Paris for the EPHE seminar we have previously reported on: Bibliothèque Mazarine, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Bibliothèque Vernon. Here are glimpses of his studies and his contribution to the seminar on Tuesday, May 5. We are grateful to all the French colleagues who have assisted his research there.

05/05/2026

Today, May 5, Archim. Policarp Chițulescu contributed to the EPHE seminar "Histoire comparée et connectée des christianismes orientaux (XVIe-XIXe s.)" convened by Prof. Vassa Kontouma and Vera Tchentsova with a presentation on the 8th volume of the "Early Arabic Printing in the East" series that the ERC-funded project TYPARABIC is publishing with De Gruyter. EAPE-8 is the first comprehensive, detailed, and richly illustrated catalog of the 18th-century Arabic books printed in Eastern Europe and Ottoman Greater Syria (present-day Syria and Lebanon), co-authored by Archim. Policarp Chițulescu and Dr. Yulia Petrova. The catalog is scheduled to be released online on the De Gruyter platform on May 29. We are grateful to the seminar organizers for the opportunity to present this new book in our series to an academic and expert audience, for the first time.

30/04/2026

Our colleague, archim. Policarp Chițulescu, senior member of the TYPARABIC project, will deliver a presentation entitled: "Livres imprimés pour les chrétiens arabes au XVIIIe siècle : un catalogue descriptif", in the framework of the Seminar: "Histoire comparée et connectée des christianismes orientaux (XVIe-XIXe s.)", organized by École Pratique des Hautes Études. The seminar will take place on May 5, 2026, at 10.00 (Paris time), and it will be also available online on Microsoft Teams. See below the link for the connection and other information:
https://shs.hal.science/HIST_OR/page/programme-2025-2026

27/04/2026

Our colleague Radu Dipratu has recently published an article, entitled "The ʿarżuḥāls of Sylvester, Patriarch of Antioch: Negotiating church affairs with the sublime porte in the first half of the 18th Century", on the Open Research Europe platforme powered by the European Research Council. The entire article is published in Open Access and it is available here:

Read the latest article version by Radu Dipratu, at Open Research Europe.