The Book of Paroemias of 1775 as a specimen of the printing-house production at al-Shuwayr

In the article the Book of Paroemias issued in al-Shuwayr in AD 1775, purchased in Beirut in December of 2005 and kept now in a private collection of St. Petersburg is examined in detail. The author gave a full description of that copy from the point of view of its design, state of preservation and also of its contents. He traced the foundation of a monastery of St. John the Baptist in al-Shuwayr on the turn of the 17th – 18th century AD, its turning into a stronghold of the Uniates separated from the Antiochian Orthodox Church, who adopted the Charter of St. Basil the Great, and the formation of a printing house in Arabic script upon it that published its first book in AD 1734 and existed till AD 1899. It is noted that one of the peculiarites of its book production consisted in the elegance of its script fabricated by Abdallâh b. Zhâhir, hereditary jeweler and its creater. It is established that the Book of Paroemias published in al-Shuwayr in AD 1775 was mentioned in the itineraries of C.-Fr. Volney and was thoroughly described in the Bibliotheca Arabica by Ch. Fr. de Schnurrer. The correspondence of that liturgical book to the Orthodox canon is demonstrated. Besides that, the attention is paid to the fact that the Uniated, who did not want to break with the East Christian tradition, spread among their flock the Roman Catholic theological doctrine through different ways, including books printed in al-Shuwayr

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