Scholarship on Christians and Christianity in the Ottoman East has flourished since the early 20th century. In the past half a century, three magisterial works appeared, each dealing with a separate Christian community: Joseph Nasrallah (1978) who focused on the Melkites; Bernard Heyberger (1996) who focused on the Catholics and the Maronites; and Constantin Panchenko (2012/2016) who focused on the Orthodox Arabs. Iona Feodorov now joins these luminaries with her book on Arabic Printing for the Christians in Ottoman Lands. This book is the definitive study of the “East-European Connection and Early Arabic Printing in the East.”

For decades, Feodorov has been the leading scholar on the interactions between the Arab Orthodox patriarchs and congregations in Syria-Lebanon and the Orthodox princes, patriarchs, and printers in Eastern Europe, especially Romania. She has published on the linguistic, historical, and theological exchanges that took place in the early modern period and her book inaugurates the project “TYPARABCIC at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy.” It is an ongoing project in which Feodorov plans an edition of the travels of Paul of Aleppo – the most important and amazing travelogue by an Arab Christian in the early modern period. It is a herculean undertaking, of which volume one has already appeared.

In Arabic Printing, Feodorov focuses on publications from 1701 on. From that year, books appeared in cities extending from Snagov and Bucharest to Aleppo and Beirut. These were all religious texts that were intended to consolidate the Orthodox in their faith as they faced powerful Catholic missionaries and, to a lesser extent, the Protestants (Calvinists and Anglicans). In 1724, the Catholic efforts succeeded in drawing a large number of Orthodox, Jacobite, and Nestorian believers to Rome, creating thereby the Uniate Church. It was this break that drove Orthodox patriarchs and princes to publish books of liturgy, hagiography, and scripture to support their Orthodox Arab flocks.

Feodorov opens with a survey of “Arabic-Book in the East before 1700.” As she shows the Catholic Church printed numerous books in Arabic, intended either for missionaries on their way to the Arab East or for readers in the region. The books promoted the teachings of the Council of Trent and the Latinization of the Christian communities in the region. But the goal was also to win over to Rome Christians of the Eastern denominations, as well as Jews and Muslims: the longest book in (Catholic) print in all the early modern period was Filippo Guadagnoli’s tome of 1637. Published by the Propaganda Fide, it was in 1161 quarto pages of the vilest language: nothing similar to it would ever appear in Arabic print. The Protestants from Germany and later from England never matched the Catholic output with their handful of poorly printed publications.

In the next unit, “In the Wake of Parting: Christian Arabic Printing to Suit All Needs,” Feodorov discusses the traumatic break of 1724. Before that date, there had been anxiety about the plight of the Orthodox because they lacked their own printed religious literature. The impact and success of printed Catholic texts in winning converts to Rome was glaring and so the patriarchs of Antioch turned to Eastern Europe for help in establishing printing presses, at first (unsuccessfully) by Patriarch Macarius (d. 1672) and (successfully) by Patriarchs Dabbas and Sylvester in the first half of the 18th century. But these presses were no match for the Catholic efforts. As Feodorov demonstrates in her unit on “Christian Arabic-Book Printing after the 1724 Division: A Fruitful Antagonism,” by the early 1730s, the Uniates had established a robust Catholic press in the monastery of St. John the Baptist in Shwayr in Lebanon. Overseen by the dedicated Abdallah Zakhir (d. 1748), it printed Arabic books of devotion and moral and doctrinal instructions. While the antagonism between the Orthodox and the Uniates might have been “fruitful,” it favored the Uniates who enjoyed theological and financial support from local missionaries and from Paris and Rome. The Shuwayr press produced more printed books than the Orthodox press, which closed down because of lack of funding; the Catholic presses also had better fonts and types, which explains why many texts were reprinted throughout the 18th century.

All the books were religious: nothing of the scientific, institutional, or intellectual transformations that were taking place in Europe was ever printed – an aspect that the French traveler Volney criticized (cited p. 218n.148). Feodorov focused on the ecclesiastical and social histories of the publications and in conducting her research, she traveled to all the sites where Arabic books were printed, and where, sometimes, the printing presses have been preserved. She located extremely rare copies of books as she explored libraries in various regions of Syria-Lebanon, as well as archives and depositories in Eastern Europe. A very helpful feature of her book is the reproduction of frontispieces along with sample pages, covers, and illustrations from dozens of printed books.

Feodorov’s detailed study of the East European-Orthodox publications reveals a significant difference between the publications arriving in the Arab East from missionary presses in Catholic and Protestant Western Europe. The 18th century witnessed the decline of Ottoman central authority which opened spaces for West European proselytization. In a region where missionaries could not replicate the power and enforcement that was taking place in America, Ireland, and southern Africa, the only means of winning converts was by means of print. Catholic and Protestant publications were aimed at winning converts – changing the local congregations of Orthodox, Nestorian, Jacobite, and Coptic (even Armenian) Christians to the churches of the new theologies of Protestantism and Tridentine Catholicism. The Orthodox publications, from Aleppo to Beirut to Bucharest were, in this respect, defensive: they were not “missionary” texts, but texts that sought to protect and preserve the Orthodox laity in their historic faith.