ABSTRACT
Religious books for Arab Christians were printed in the pre-Tanzimat era mainly in Europe, in Rome or Paris. But there were also other types of literature produced in Paris. For propagandistic reasons, the French had printed a variety of Arabic and Turkish tracts and pamphlets during the Egyptian campaign, Despite their stylistic shortcomings, we can assume that not only the historian Al-Jabarti read them. The same applies to a small brochure, 'The speech of the Ottoman muezzin directed to his own coreligionists', translated by the French dragomans Belletete, Kieffer and Sylvestre de Sacy. Its Turkish version (Muezzin-i osmaniden kendu dinda§lanna kitab olunan nutkudur) was reproduced in the chronicle of the Ottoman historian 'Mutercim' Asim.49 It was distributed in 6000 copies. Napoleon's Bulletins de la Grande Armee (1805-1806) were also translated into Turkish by several prominent Oriental scholars.50 The Turkish Bible, which goes back to the 17th century translation of Ali Bey (i.e. Albertus Bobovius, d. 1675), was first printed in Paris (1819: New Testament and 1827: the whole Bible), revised by Daniel Kieffer (1767-1833). The same applies to the translation of the Bible from krapar into Modern Armenian by the Mekhitarist father Hovhannes Zohrabian, which was published in Paris in 1825. Paris al-Shidyaq's famous novel Al-sdq 'aid al-sdq appeared in Paris in 1855. In the 1860s and 1870s, Turkish residents and political emigres (§inasi, Ali Suavi, etc.) were very active in the French capital. They also published a few remarkable works there, such as a Turkish translation of Benjamin Franklin's immensely popular The Way to Wealth.51
