[PSALMS IN ARABIC] Davidis regis et prophetæ Psalmi, ex arabico in latinum idioma à Victorio Scialac Accurensi et Gabriele Sionita Edeniensi, Maronitis, è Monte Libano, sacræ theologiæ doctoribus redditi.

Rome : Ex Typographia Savariana, excudebat Stephanus Paulinus, 1619. Second edition. Quarto (230 x 160 mm), contemporary limp vellum (a little darkened, with mild staining and some corner wear), spine with black leather title-piece lettered in gilt ‘Psalmi Arab.-Lat.’; original endpapers; title-page in Latin, in red and black and with vignette woodcut of King David in prayer; title of the Dedication to Louis XIII also in red and black; pp. [viii], 464 (of 474), [3]; text printed in double columns in Latin (right) and Arabic (left); some minor worming to bottom margins of the outermost leaves, lower corners a little dog-eared, occasional but extremely light spotting, otherwise very clean and sound throughout; lacking the last 10 pages of the main text, which appear not to have been bound in, otherwise a good example in an unrestored contemporary binding.

Second edition of this bilingual psalter, in which the psalms in Arabic are presented as a parallel text alongside a translation into Latin, in the form of an Arabic book (opening from the right). It was produced by Stefano Paolini on the press of the Typographia Savariana, the printing house founded in Rome by François Savary de Brèves, a renowned Orientalist and formerly French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. First printed on the same press in 1614, the translation from Arabic into Latin was made by two Syriac Christian scholars from the College of Maronites in Rome, Victor (Victorius) Scialac and Gabriel (Gabriele) Sionita, who – according to Lelong-Masch – relied to a large extent on the Syriac Peshitta during the translation process.

Zenker, Bibliotheca Orientalis, 74; Delaveau & Hillard, 2360; Darlow & Moule, 1644; Brunet, IV, 921