Typarabic

TYPARABIC team members and their guests have participated in a colloquium convened by Peter Sragher, President of FITRALIT, the Translators' Branch of the Romanian Writers' Union, on Thursday, May 27, at the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest. Yulia Petrova discussed and read passages from EAPE-9, which is soon to be delivered to De Gruyter for publication. Her forthcoming book contains the prefaces and colophons of all the Arabic books in the corpus of the TYPARABIC project. Ioana Feodorov and Nicholas Bishara presented additional pages from the Arabic literature that connect Romanians with the Syrian Christians over the centuries. Razvan Bucuroiu, a PhD student of the Romanian Academy School of Advanced Studies, evoked the figure of the Syrian priest Emil Murakade, who spent 13 years in Bucharest between the two World Wars and, among other cultural feats, translated Eminescu's poetry into Arabic for the first time. The audience enjoyed Peter Sragher's lively and passionate interpretation of Eminescu's poem Rugaciunea unui dac, while our colleague Nicholas read the Arabic translation by Murakade published in the literary journal Convorbiri literare in 1939. Overall, the event was a celebration of the outcomes of the TYPARABIC project, which is nearing completion on June 30, and the age-old relations between the Romanian Principalities and the Arabic-speaking Christians of the Ottoman Empire.
Photos: Adorian Tarla.

"Pages of Arabic Literature With and About Romanians: From Paul of Aleppo to Athanasius Dabbas and Sylvester of Antioch" | The 58th Literary Translation Colloquia, organized under the auspices of the Bucharest Branch – Literary Translation Section of the Romanian Writers’ Union.

Ioana Feodorov, the PI of the TYPARABIC project, will be joined by Yulia Petrova, Răzvan Bucuroiu, and Nicholas Bishara, for an evening dedicated to the Arabic premodern Christian literature. There will be presented pages from the Journal of Paul of Aleppo describing his journey through Moldavia, Wallachia, and Ukraine between 1653 and 1658. The Journal has been translated into Romanian by Ioana Feodorov (2014, 2016, 2020) and edited in Arabic together with Yulia Petrova. The guests will also present passages from the Prefaces of the Arabic books printed in Snagov, Bucharest, and Aleppo between 1701 and 1711 through the collaboration of Antim the Iberian and Athanasius Dabbas, Patriarch of Antioch, under the patronage of the Wallachian ruler Constantin Brâncoveanu. Written in a distinctive literary style, these Prefaces illuminate the relations between the Christian Arabs of Ottoman Syria and the people of Moldavia and Wallachia. They are part of a volume to be published in June 2026 by the De Gruyter, in both Arabic and English, as Volume 9 of the EAPE Series of the TYPARABIC project. This event will offer an exclusive preview of this book. The texts will be read both in their original Arabic, by Nicholas Bishara, and the Romanian translation.

Archim. Policarp Chițulescu, our colleague on the TYPARABIC team, has visited a few important libraries while in Paris for the EPHE seminar we have previously reported on: Bibliothèque Mazarine, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Bibliothèque Vernon. Here are glimpses of his studies and his contribution to the seminar on Tuesday, May 5. We are grateful to all the French colleagues who have assisted his research there.