Da L'Aquila, Antonio
Arabicae linguae novae
1650, Romae (Rome), Propaganda Fide
First Edition
First edition of an important contribution to the study of Arabic in seventeenth-century Europe. Arabicae Linguae Novae served the varied but closely related needs of missionary training, Roman Oriental scholarship, and the practical acquisition of Arabic in the Levant. This substantial grammar was designed not merely for the vulgar idiom but also for the understanding of doctrinal Arabic, as its title declares. Its author, Antonio ab Aquila (also known as Antonio dall’Aquila), was a Franciscan of the Strict Observance whose career lends the work particular authority. He departed for Egypt in 1630, served first as superior of the Alexandrian residence, then as commissary of the mission and guardian at Aleppo. After a decade in the Levant, he was recalled to Rome to teach Arabic at the Franciscan College of San Pietro in Montorio, where the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) had appointed him lector of Arabic. The grammar reflects that institutional context: Arabic is treated not as an antiquarian curiosity, but as a working language for preaching, teaching, reading, and doctrinal transmission across Eastern Christian and Islamic settings. The book succeeds and substantially expands the earlier work of Tommaso Obicini da Novara, Antonio’s teacher and the first lector of Arabic at San Pietro in Montorio, whose 1621 Grammatica Arabica had remained closely tied to Ibn Ājurrūm’s Muqaddima. Antonio’s work is broader in scope and more explicitly pedagogical, suited to missionary students of differing levels. He later served as reviser for the Arabic Bible project at the Propaganda press, working alongside Ludovico Marracci, Filippo Guadagnoli, Athanasius Kircher, and Sergio Risi on the commission for the Arabic Scriptures.
The grammar is divided into three parts, following the classical tripartite structure of Latin grammars adapted to Arabic morphology. Part One, Orthography, covers the Arabic alphabet in six chapters, with a full tabular "Alphabetum Arabicum" showing each letter in its isolated, initial, medial, and final forms, together with Latin transliterations and annotations on pronunciation. Part Two, Etymology, is divided into two books: Liber Primus "De Verbo" treats verb conjugation in twenty-five chapters, covering sound, weak, deaf, assimilated, and defective verbs, with paradigm tables for the ten Arabic verb measures, or awzan; Liber Secundus "De Nomine & Particula" treats nouns, pronouns, particles of negation, optation, and vocative in a further twenty-six chapters. Part Three, Syntax, addresses concord, word order, verbal and nominal constructions, and the construction of the comparative and superlative. The work concludes with an elaborate pedagogical apparatus: graded exercises for four classes of students, a section "De Triplici Lectione in Libros Arabicos" explaining three progressive methods for reading Arabic codices, three reading exercises in the form of a prayer of thanksgiving in Arabic and Latin, "Agimus tibi gratias o Deus potens super omnia pro universis beneficiis", an Index Dictionum, or vocabulary, and an "Epitoma Indubitatae Fidei Veritatis", a catechetical summary of Christian doctrine in Arabic. The Admonitio ad Lectorem names the Arabic books printed in Rome for which the grammar is preparatory: the Sacred Bible, the four Gospels, the Doctrina Christiana, the Apologia of Filippo Guadagnoli, and the Ars Medicinae and Philosophy of Avicenna. The chapter on Syriac characters, Cap. VI, addresses the Garshuni tradition - the practice of writing Arabic in Syriac script, used by Eastern Christian communities. This acknowledges that missionaries in the Levant would encounter Arabic not only in Arabic script but in the Syriac alphabets of Maronite, Melkite, and Jacobite communities, a practical reality that few European grammars of the period addressed.
A missionary grammar with real dust on its boots, shaped between Rome and the Middle East, where language meant action. A grammar that is lived, preached, negotiated, where doctrine, ink, and travel meet.
Pp. [1] f.e., [40], 678, [1] r.e.
Contemporary limp vellum binding, spine with five raised bands and contemporary manuscript title; small wormhole at the upper portion. Wormhole at the lower part of the front hinge. The four folding conjugation tables are lacking, as in many surviving copies of a grammar intended for daily use. Some light browning. Latin and Arabic types. Given the rarity of such heavily used 17th-century manuals, it's considered a very good copy.
Dimensions (inches): 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 1 3/4
Antonio dall'Aquila (fl. 1630–1679), O.F.M. Strict Obs., Franciscan Arabist and missionary in Egypt and Syria, lector of Arabic at San Pietro in Montorio, Rome.
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