ANTAKI, 'Abd Allāh ibn al-Fadl al- (trans.); ARNUDI, Būtrūs.

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Kitāb Tafsīr sab'at mazmūrāt min mazāmīr Dāwūd al-Nabī al-mulaqqabāt bi-mazāmīr al-tawbah. Rare first edition, in a contemporary Lebanese binding, of this Arabic text of the seven penitential psalms by the prophet David, printed at the Arabic press of the Monastery of St John, in Khinshāra, on Mount Lebanon. The monastery hosted the Shuwayrite Greek Catholic monastic community as well as one of the earliest Arabic presses in the Levant. It was established by the Syrian Catholic printer and engraver 'Abd Allah Zākhir (1684-1748), who had started his career in Aleppo and is known as "the founder of book printing in Lebanon" (Petrova, p. 187). The press operated from 1733 to the end of the 19th century, with a focus on Catholic texts. The text of the Psalms, translated by 'Abd Allah ibn al-Fadl al-Antaki (11th century), is divided into words or shorts phrases, followed by a commentary originally written in Arabic by Father Būtrūs Arnudi. Though Shurrer suggests the Arabic text was possibly edited by Zākhir himself, it is more likely this was done by his successor, Suleiman al-Qattan, after Zākhir's death. A unique feature of this edition is the final thematic alphabetical list, which explains concepts such as Allah (god), iman (faith), Rūh Qudus ("Holy Spirit"), and tawba (repentance).The binding was also produced at the Monastery of St John, and we have traced a very similar binding on another Dair al-Shuwair imprint. A tipped-in manuscript leaf comes from a copy of Kitāb al-sa

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