KIRSTEN, Peter.

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Grammatices Arabicae libri I-III; A complete collection of Kirsten's privately printed Arabic works in folio, comprising the first works printed in Germany with Arabic type, including a bilingual edition of Avicenna's materia medica, an Arabic grammar (essentially a revised version of Ibn Ajurrum's medieval grammar), and Kirsten's sampler of Arabic types. Peter Kirsten (1577-1640) was among the earliest non-Dutch scholar-typographers. Born in Breslau (Wrocław), he established a private press there in 1607. His interest in Arabic arose from a practical scholarly aim: to read the medical writings of Avicenna in the original, dissatisfied with the inaccurate and inadequate Latin translations then in circulation. During a visit to the Low Countries, Joseph Scaliger impressed upon him that a true physician must know Arabic and Greek as well as Latin. Kirsten subsequently studied Arabic versions of Christian texts in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. He did so not out of any proselytizing impulse, but in order to supply parallel texts sufficiently familiar to readers to facilitate the learning of Arabic. He later served as court physician to Queen Christina of Sweden and as professor of medicine at Uppsala, where he died.Kirsten had his Arabic type cut by Petrus von Seelau and published these works at his own expense from the Officina Baumanniana in Breslau, the printing house continued by Magdalena Baumann after the death of her husband, Georg. The publication dates are expresse

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