The New Testament in Arabic. Rome, in Typographia Medicea, 1591.

Two issues of the Gospels in Arabic were published in 1591 (though some copies are dated 1590 on the t-p and 1591 on the colophon) one in Arabic alone and one in Arabic and Latin. This is the first with the interlinear Latin translation by Leonardo Sionita, editied by Giovan Battista Raimondi (1536-1614), the great Orientalist who had been entrusted with the creation of the Medici Oriental Press by Duke Ferdinand of Medici, which was founded in 1584, specializing in the publication of works in Oriental languages, especially Arabic.

The French type designer Robert Granjon, whose name is still associated with a wide range of unsurpassed Latin and Greek typefaces, was commissioned to design the Arabic type. The early printed editions of the Arabic Gospels are all forms of the ‘Alexandrian Vulgate.