In 2013, I contributed the paper "Beginnings of Arabic Printing in Ottoman Syria (1706-1711): The Romanians' Part in Patriarch Athanasios Dabbas's Achievements" to an ARAM conference, a text subsequently published in 2016 in ARAM, 25, 1-2 (2013), pp. 233-262. The early work that I presented there developed into a project funded by the European Research Council, TYPARABIC, for which I received an Advanced Grant in 2020 (the first such grant awarded to Romania) and which I am now leading in Bucharest, at the Institute for South-East European Studies. The project focuses on the history of Arabic printing in the 18th century beyond Western and Central Europe. Our main objective is to examine the circumstances and the outcomes of early printing in Arabic, with Arabic type, in the Ottoman Near East for various Arabic-speaking Christian communities. On the one hand, we focus on the transfer of printing technology from the Romanian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia to the Ottoman provinces and its consequences for the social progress of Arab Christians. On the other hand, the project aims to yield a systematic and detailed inventory of the Arabic books printed between 1701 and 1800 in Moldavia and Wallachia, in Snagov, Bucharest, and Iaşi, and in Greater Syria, in Aleppo, the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Dayr al-Shuwayr (Khinshăra, Mount Lebanon), and Beirut. Written at mid-term, during our project, this paper briefly presents the new research we are conducting on the transfer of printing expertise and tools from Wallachia to Aleppo as well as the presence of elements of content and book art originating in East European presses that were included in Arabic books printed at Aleppo and Beirut during the 18th century.
Ioana Feodorov (Thu,) studied this question.