TURICEMf.] 
 
 THE STORY OF THE 
 ARABIC BIBLE 
 
 A CARAVAN IN SYRIA 
 
 AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY 
 NEW YOHK 
 
 me 
 
THE STORY OF THE 
 ARABIC BIBLE 
 
 'T^HE story of the Arabic Bible deals with a struggle 
 -A- begun by the fathers and bequeathed in trust to this 
 generation— the struggle to domesticate the gospel of 
 Jesus Christ in that wonderful language which Moliam- 
 medanism calls divine, and with which it has superseded 
 Christian language, in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. 
 The story begins with the Arabic alphabet and the man 
 who shaped the type with which to print it. 
 
 The mission of the American Board had no sooner 
 brought its printing press from Malta to Beirut in 1834, 
 than Mohammedans criticized its Arabic type. The type 
 had been made in Europe, and looked — well, about as 
 English type would look if designed by an Arab. The 
 Rev. Eli Smith saw that in plans for using the printing 
 press as a teacher of the gospel, the quality of the equip- 
 ment counts ; the press would be handicapped unless its 
 type pleased the fastidious, artistic taste of Mohammedans. 
 Such type did not exist ; therefore it was a duty to create 
 it. He collected specimens of choice Arabic manuscripts 
 and of writing-masters' beautiful models, and with a reed 
 pen copied from them the letters of the alphabet to serve 
 as models for the type. Since the letters of Arabic words 
 are generally joined together in printing as in writing, 
 each letter changes its form to suit its position ; and in- 
 cluding the vowel points, about 1,800 different types are 
 necessary to print one complete alphabet. 
 
 The preparation of these written models having been 
 finished. Dr. Smith, in 1836, took passage in a little 
 Prussian schooner for Smyrna, to watch over the cutting 
 
of the steel punches with which to strike the matrices 
 used in casting type. The voyage ended in shipwreck, 
 and all Dr. Smith's written models were lost under the 
 smiling waters of the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 Catastrophe is a spur to a determined man, and Dr. 
 Smith at once began again at the beginning. He col- 
 lected more specimens of fine writing and made a new 
 set of models. Then Mr. Hallock, the American Board's 
 printer at Smyrna, under Dr. Smith's guidance, skillfully 
 
 cut the steel punches and 
 struck the matrices. 
 
 Providing types to print an 
 alphabet may seem a very 
 small thing, yet if there had 
 been the slightest slip or 
 change of form in designing 
 the letters, or in cutting the 
 steel punches, Mohammedans 
 would have refused to read 
 any book printed with that 
 type. To this day book lovers 
 among them prefer manu- 
 scripts to printed books. But 
 this undertaking was so care- 
 fully and sympathetically 
 carried out that when the 
 work was done, the slant and 
 curve of the letters and the 
 thickness and swell of the lines were singularly perfect, 
 according to the most critical Arab calligrapher's taste. 
 So Smyrna, home of the second of the Seven Churches 
 of Asia, had this added to the riches of its history : that 
 it was closely connected with executing the plan of 
 presenting the Christian Scriptures in the great Moham- 
 medan language. 
 
 With the finishing of the matrices, a part only of the 
 work was done. The whole batch of precious bits of 
 
 4 
 
 REV. ELI SMITH, D.D. 
 
metal had to be carried to Germany by a long and tedious 
 journey, for there were neither steamboats nor railroads 
 on that route. The fonts of type were cast at the Tauch- 
 nitz establishment in Leipzig. Dr. Smith spent some 
 months there in 1838 supervising the work ; and in 1841 
 the Mission Press at Beirut was at last equipped with 
 Arabic type, the equal of which, for beauty, was not then 
 to be found in any other printing office in the world. 
 The work had occupied some five years. This achieve- 
 ment, so laboriously worked out in fine detail, was the 
 successful execution of the first part of a plan for a mis- 
 sionary literature campaign of the greatest importance. 
 
 The Scriptures had been translated into Arabic long 
 before this. The four Gospels, at least, were translated 
 in the sixth century. About the year 750 the Roman 
 Catholic Bishop of Seville translated the New Testament 
 and a part of the Old, for the benefit of the Moors of 
 Andalusia. In 1671 the Maronite Bishop Serkis issued 
 a translation of the Bible from the Vulgate ; but it was 
 too costly to be any poor man's possession, it was inaccu- 
 rate, and its style was uneven. The British and Foreign 
 Bible Society, soon after its organization, adopted this 
 version and circulated it rather extensively in Syria and 
 Egypt. This was the version used for thirty years by 
 the American missionaries in Syria ; but Mohammedans 
 reviled it, saying that the coarse diction and the graceless 
 form of the printed letters clearly proved the book to be 
 a shabby production of human enterprise, not at all in- 
 spired of God. Then in 1851 the Society for the Promo- 
 tion of Christian Knowledge (London) published an 
 Arabic version of the Scriptures made by Professor Lee 
 and Faris-es-Shidiak, an eminent Syrian writer ; but 
 this version followed closely the King James' English 
 version, even reproducing its errors. The success of 
 missionary work in Syria, Egypt, and Arabia depended 
 upon the production of a new version which should 
 accurately render the original in perfect Arabic form. 
 
 5 
 
In 1844 Dr. Smith presented to Drs. Anderson and 
 Hawes, the deputation from the American Board present 
 at the annual meeting of the mission, a paper containing 
 cogent reasons why a new translation of the Bible should 
 be made, and this was decided upon in 1847, Dr. Smith 
 being assigned to the work. 
 
 This decision could not be carried out save at a heavy 
 cost. During twenty years the American Bible Society 
 had aided the mission in the struggle to circulate the 
 Bible in Arabic. In 1829 it had sent $800 to the British 
 and Foreign Bible Society to pay for the Psalms in 
 Arabic to be shipped to the Syrian Mission for use in 
 schools. In 1838 it paid the cost of printing some por- 
 tions of Scripture at the Beirut Press. In 1840 it under- 
 took the expense of printing the Psalms in Arabic. In 
 1841 it made another grant to print the book of Acts with 
 Dr. Smith's beautiful new type, and it has in its library 
 a specimen of this edition inscribed in Dr. Smith's own 
 handwriting. In 1843 it furnished the money for an edi- 
 tion of the Proverbs. 
 
 So, in 1848, when the Syrian Mission came to the Bible 
 Society with a request for $500 to pay for the support of a 
 native assistant to Dr. Smith in his work of translation, 
 the Society did not hesitate about participating in this 
 great enterprise. Was it not in some degree a steward 
 of the Oracles of God ? It made the grant, repeating it 
 in successive years, besides bearing the expense of print- 
 ing the portions of the Bible as they were completed. 
 The Society from the very outset thus committed itself 
 to the financing of the enterprise. Neither the Society 
 nor the generous donors of the money can ever regret 
 their share in the sacrifices which made the Standard 
 Arabic version an accomplished fact. 
 
 Dr. Smith's method of working was marked with the 
 thoroughness that characterized all of his undertakings. 
 The duty of his assistant, Mr. Bistani, was to prepare the 
 first draft of the translation, using the Syriac version as 
 
 6 
 
ARAB VILLAGER AND HIS CAMEL 
 
an aid. When he finished a chapter, he passed it over 
 to Dr. Smith, who made it the basis of his own work and 
 brought it into conformity with the Hebrew or Grreek. 
 As soon as any complete portion of the Bible was trans- 
 lated, it was put into type, a hundred proofs were struck 
 off and sent to British, American, and German scholars, 
 and to educated Syrians and Arabs. The criticisms made 
 upon these proofs were afterward carefully collated and 
 considered, and the final result was a translation which 
 had the approval of the greatest Arabic scholars of the 
 day. 
 
 Dr. Smith sent out his printed proofs of Genesis early 
 in 1850. He had translated the New Testament, and the 
 greater part of the Old Testament, before he died in 1857. 
 He was only fifty years of age. He had hoped and 
 prayed th^t his life might be spared to finish the great 
 undertaking. But it was not to be. When he saw that 
 his life had reached its allotted term, he explicitly for- 
 bade the publication, in his name, of any part of the 
 translation, except the books of Genesis and Exodus and 
 the first twelve chapters of Matthew. All the rest must 
 be regarded as unfinished work. So he fell asleep, in the 
 place of his labors, on Sunday morning, January 11, 
 1857. 
 
 We commonly speak of the Arabic Bible as having 
 required sixteen years for its preparation, but Dr. Smith's 
 work from 1836 onward was definitely and closely re- 
 lated to the translation. He never relaxed for a moment 
 the study of the Arabic language. Since he steadily 
 labored on his preparations from that year, it is perfectly 
 proper to say that the translation of the existing Arabic 
 Bible cost the two great men, Smith and Van Dyck, 
 twenty-eight years of hard labor. 
 
 For a moment Dr. Smith's death seemed to crush 
 beyond reconstruction the enterprise of Arabic Bible 
 translation. The American Bible Society had spent 
 some 110,000 upon Arabic Scriptures, and had nothing to 
 
 8 
 
show for this great outlay but a few volumes of an un- 
 satisfactory, old version and piles of unfinished manu- 
 script. 
 
 But one of the notable characteristics of the Bible 
 enterprise in foreign mission fields is that those engaged 
 in it have no faculty for perceiving defeat. The death 
 
 REV. C. V. A. VAN DYCK, D.D. 
 
 of the leader in this Bible translation meant, not stop- 
 page of the work, but prompt action to find a new leader, 
 also able to use Arabic as his own language. The Eev. 
 Cornelius Van Dyck had been in the service of the 
 American Board in Syria seventeen years at the time of 
 Dr. Smith's death. He was one of the choice scholars of 
 
 9 
 
the mission, having an extraordinary fluency in the use of 
 the Arabic. Very shortly his associates sent to Boston a 
 request for Dr. Van Dyck's transfer from his station at 
 Sidon to Beirut, that he might take up Dr. Smith's un- 
 finished work. He was then thirty-nine years of age. 
 The transfer was made by the Prudential Committee, 
 and the result amply justified the choice. Dr. Van Dyck, 
 like Paul with the Athenians, had won influence among 
 Mohammedan scholars through his profound acquaint- 
 ance with Arabic literature. He soon induced a brilliant 
 Mohammedan graduate of the great Al Azhar University 
 of Cairo to take part in the translation of the Bible. 
 Thus the work steadily proceeded, in the main upon lines 
 already laid down, the Bible Society year by year mak- 
 ing grants to cover the expense of printing. 
 
 Arduous labors during eight years brought the trans- 
 lation to a successful conclusion in August, 1864. The 
 printing of the whole Bible was completed in March, 
 1865. This event, which Dr. Anderson, Secretary of the 
 American Board, well characterized as "of the highest 
 importance to a large portion of the human race," was 
 appropriately celebrated by the missionaries. In the 
 room where Dr. Smith had labored on the translation 
 eight years, and Dr. Van Dyck eight years more, the 
 missionaries assembled to pray and to thank God for the 
 completion of the great undertaking. Then the sound 
 of many voices arose from below, and a large company 
 of young Syrians, workmen at the press and members 
 of the Protestant community of Beirut, began to sing 
 a hymn composed by one of their number for the 
 glad occasion. The hymn was afterward translated 
 from Arabic by the Rev. H. H. Jessup, D. D., as 
 follows : 
 
 " Hail, day thrice blessed of our God ! 
 Rejoice, let all men bear a part, 
 Complete at length thy printed word, 
 Lord, print its truths on every heart. 
 10 
 
" To Him who gave his precious word, 
 Arise and with glad praises sing ; 
 Exalt and magnify our Lord, 
 Our Maker and our Glorious King. 
 
 "Lord, spare thy servant, through whose toil 
 Thou giv'st us this, of books the best ; 
 Bless all who sliared the arduous task, 
 From Eastern land, or distant West. 
 
 " Amen ! Amen ! Lift up the voice ; 
 
 Praise God whose mercy's e'er the same ; 
 His goodness all our song employs. 
 
 Thanksgivings then to His Great Name." 
 
 In 1840 the Rev. S. H. Calhoun, the Agent of the 
 American Bible Society for the Levant, wrote, in a plea 
 for funds for translation work: "Is it a matter of no 
 interest or consequence to American Christians whether 
 the people for whom these translations are intended 
 have or do not have the Word of God in a language 
 which they can understand ? Oh, that Christians in 
 America would reflect a little upon the condition of a 
 nation which has no Bible ! " Perhaps such language 
 may help us to-day to understand the spontaneous out- 
 hurst of joy which celebrated the completion of the 
 Arabic version. "Surely not for many centuries," 
 wrote one of the missionaries at Beirut, " have angels in 
 heaven heard a sweeter sound arising from Syria than 
 the voices of that band of young men ascribing glory 
 and praise to God that now^ for the first time the word 
 of God is given to their nation and tongue in its purity." 
 Dr. Van Dyck, on finishing the translation, expressed 
 his deep feeling in the midst of the general joy by send- 
 ing fifty dollars to the American Bible Society as a 
 thank-offering because he had been permitted to finish a 
 work of paramount significance to the human race. 
 
 As soon as the translation of the Bible approached 
 completion, the Syrian Mission, in March, 1864, had 
 called upon the American Bible Society to electrotype it 
 
 11 
 
in ten different forms : witli references, without refer- 
 ences, with vowel points, in large type, in pocket size, 
 and so on. Few can realize the tremendous complexity 
 of a page of Arabic proof, or the sight-destroying labor 
 involved in making it ready for the press. The reset- 
 ting of the Bible for every new edition was not to be 
 thought of. Economy, as well as accuracy, required the 
 construction of electrotype plates which would always 
 be ready for printing additional thousands of copies. 
 The Bible Society hesitated before the great expense of 
 this work, estimated to be not less than |35,000. On ex- 
 amining the records of sales, it was found that between 
 1860 and 1864 the Society had already paid for publish- 
 ing 43,000 volumes of the different portions of the Arabic 
 Bible. As the printing progressed in Beirut, these had 
 been almost all purchased by the people, so that new edi- 
 tions must be printed immediately. After mature con- 
 sideration of the whole question, the Bible Society decided 
 to grant the request of the Syrian Mission. The work 
 was begun in 1866 as a special feature of the fiftieth year 
 of the Society's existence, new Arabic type being cast 
 in New York for the purpose. It was a memorable 
 undertaking, destined beneficently to affect almost every 
 non-Christian land. 
 
 The expenditure of the American Bible Society upon 
 issues of Arabic Scriptures during seventy-six years 
 probably exceeds $100,000. Since the new Standard 
 Arabic version began to be printed in 1860, the Mission 
 Press at Beirut (since 1870 being connected with the 
 Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions) had printed 
 1,076,518 volumes of Scripture in Arabic. It is some- 
 times not understood by casual observers that this is a 
 work of the American Bible Society. Mr. Freyer, the 
 superintendent of the Beirut Mission Press, writing for 
 publication in April, 1904, felt it necessary to call atten- 
 tion to this fact. He says : "At the time of translation, 
 the Bible in various sizes was set in type and electro- 
 
 12 
 
MEMORIAL TABLET IN ARABIC IN THE ROOM 
 WHERE THE ARABIC BIBLE WAS 
 TRANSLATED 
 
plates made. All this was paid for by the American 
 Bible Society, whose property they are to-day. As 
 necessity for printing new editions of the Bible, or parts 
 thereof arises, the American Bible Society gives authority 
 for the work, and the Mission Press does the printing 
 and binding. For this work the Bible Society pays the 
 actual cost of production. Likewise, when Scriptures 
 have been printed and bound, they are distributed and 
 sold by direction of the Bible Society." In short, the 
 entire work of Arabic Bible publication and distribution 
 is at the expense and under the direction of the American 
 Bible Society, through its Agency in Constantinople, 
 with this exception— that the British Bible Society dis- 
 tributes, at its own expense, the Scriptures which it re- 
 ceives at cost price from the American Bible Society. 
 
 The friends who have contributed to this work in 
 previous years, and those who have rallied to prevent its 
 suspension in this year (1906), will naturally ask, before 
 we leave this story of the Arabic Bible, "What is the 
 good of it all ? What has been the result ? " The Book 
 has gone forth from the Mission Press at Beii^ut into 
 Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt in many great 
 editions ; the issues for 1905 somewhat exceeding thirty 
 thousand volumes. It has been circulated in less degree 
 among the teeming millions of all North Africa, from 
 the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. It has found its way 
 across the Sahara to Timbuktu, and into the Mohamme- 
 dan regions of north central Africa as far south as the 
 Niger River on the west of the continent, and to Mom- 
 basa on the east. A regular demand for it exists at the 
 Cape of Good Hope. It circulates to some extent among 
 Mohammedans in Persia, Central Asia, India, China, and 
 Malaysia. The Arabic Bible from Beirut has found 
 readers in the Philippine Islands, in Yucatan, and in 
 Brazil. The Syrian colonies in New York and in Chi- 
 cago, as well as in Buenos Ayres, use this Bible, imported 
 from Beirut for their benefit. The Syrian Mission has 
 
 14 
 
thus found the Bible Society a faithful fellow-lahorer in 
 what the appeal of the mission in 1847 prophetically 
 described as an undertaking " to give the Word of God 
 to forty millions of perishing sinners, to write their 
 commentaries, their concordances, their theology, their 
 sermons, their tracts, their school books, and their relig- 
 ious journals ; in short, to give them a Christian litera- 
 ture, or that germinating commencement of one which 
 can perpetuate its life and expand into full maturity. 
 Such labors are gigantic verities taking fast hold on the 
 salvation of myriads, which no man can number, of the 
 present and all future generations." 
 
 The fathers bore the burden of great toil and expendi- 
 ture in providing the Arabic Bible ; the children inherit 
 the duty of using it aright. It is not for any uncertain 
 work or tentative enterprise that the American Bible So- 
 ciety asks the interest and the prayers of its supporters. 
 The Arabic version is a proved success. It is one of the 
 noblest of all versions in non-Christian languages, and 
 the gospel is now at home in the language of Islam. All 
 that we now have to do is to protect the text from printer's 
 error and to see that supplies for printing and circulating 
 this doubly sacred book are yearly made good. The in- 
 crease of its circulation is a duty left to us in implicit 
 trust by the heroes now entered into their rest. As was 
 pointed out in an address of Bible Day, 1904, by the Rev. 
 Dr. Hoskins of the Syrian Mission : " Not one of the orig- 
 inal circle of workers of 1844 is left to speak to us to-day. 
 Bright boys who entered the Press in those early days 
 grew slowly into gray-haired men as they handled the 
 millions of types necessary for each of the complete edi- 
 tions of the Bible. Some sacrificed the light of their 
 eyes, others the cunning and skill of their hands, and 
 then they passed out silently into the night of death. Eli 
 Smith and Cornelius Van Allen Van Dyck gave their life- 
 blood to the task. , . . Their memory, the fruits of 
 their toil, we must hold as a secret trust. If we can toil 
 
 15 
 
on as faithfully in reproducing-, and distributing, and 
 preaching the word of God as they did in making the 
 book, then the cause of the Christian faith is safe, no 
 matter how darkly the storm clouds lower, nor however 
 slow seems the coming of the Gospel Day," 
 
 American Bible Society Leaflet, No. 33 1906 : 5, 5, 5m 
 
 16