Kitab al-Ahad al-Jadid ya'ni Injil al-Muqaddas

printed by the creator of the oriental-type foundry

A rare survival of the 1820 Bible in Arabic printed in London by Richard Watts, containing the text to the New Testament with the Arabic translation taken from the 1671 Biblia Arabica printed in Rome. The work was printed at the bequest of the British and Foreign Bible Society, at the suggestion of the Syrian Archbishop of Jerusalem (Darlow and Moule, 1666).

Richard Watts was the printer for the University of Cambridge between 1802 and 1809, before setting up his own printing workshop in Hertfordshire until 1816, when he moved to Temple Bar in London where he set up the Oriental-Type Foundry. During this period at Temple Bar Watts became known as the cutter and founder of his own oriental types, amassing an impressive collection for his press and making him the printer of choice for oriental language translations for the Bible Society, Church Missionary Society, Prayer Book Society and Homily Society among others. Furthermore, Watts trained a few notable apprentices in his Oriental-Type Foundry including Mirza Salih (appointed around 1819) and Sulllivan Law Hyder (appointed around 1820), who went on to become a printed in Calcutta around 1831 likely taking some of the type from this foundry with him.

Only two institutional copies of this work have been traced, both of which are in the British Isles, at the University of Edinburgh Libraries and at the University of Glasgow Library.

First edition thus, 8vo (215 x 138 mm); [4], 352pp., printed entirely in Arabic using a very elegant Arabic type, cut by the publisher Watts, a few early pencil markings to the marings else internally very clean and crisp, some minor foxing to preliminary and penultimate leaves (mostly affecting endpapers and blanks), twentieth-century pencil inscription to front free endpaper; fine contemporary panelled calf, spine in compartments, spine and edges very skillfully repaired, a very handsome example.

Darlow and Moule 1666.