[Kitab zubur Da'ud al-Malik wa-al-nabt].

8vo. (6), 230 pp. (without terminal blank). Title within double rules, added ruling in red. 18th-century (probably English) gilt-tooled red half morocco, contrasting morocco lettering-piece, blue paper boards. A rare London-printed Arabic translation of the Psalms of David by 'Abdallah ibn al-Fadl al-Antaki, taken from the revised and corrected edition published at Aleppo by Athanasius, Patriarch of Antioch, in 1706. For this SPCK edition marginal notes, the Decalogue and Lords Prayer have been added. - This work, which represents the first separate British edition of the Psalms in Arabic, was printed by Samuel Palmer (1692-1732), prepared for the press by Sulaiman Ibn-Ya'qub as-Saliliyani, with a new Arabic font produced by a young William Caslon. The project was beset with difficulties: conceived in 1720, it took five years to come to fruition. The intention, as is printed in the preface of "An extract of several letters relating to the great charity and usefulness of printing the New Testament and Psalter in the Arabick language" (London, 1725), was to "preserve and propagate the Christian Faith among our Brethren in Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and other Eastern Countries from whence we first received it". - As William Brown notes "the whole impression, consisting of upwards of six thousand copies, was sent abroad, so that a copy of it is now rarely to be seen" (The History of Missions or, Of the Propagation of Christianity Among the Heathen, Since the Reformation. Philadelphia, 1816). Darlow/Moule enumerates the impression more exactly to 6,250 copies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the work's intended use, ESTC locates copies at just four British libraries (BL, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford), two in Europe (Berlin State Library and the Dutch State Library), and a single location in North America (General Theological Seminary). - A trifle rubbed and marked, else a handsome copy with occasional marginal notes in pencil, marking to margins. - Darlow/Moule 1654. ESTC T154998 (with erroneous pagination).