[IRAQ.] &
VARIOUS AUTHORS.
Choix de Lectures Graduées a l'usage des Enfants.
FRENCH FABLES PRINTED IN MOSUL
Printed at the Dominican Press in Mosul, this collection of excerpts from the French literary canon is a rare and attractive example of early typographic printing in Ottoman Iraq. In addition to the fables of Fénelon and La Fontaine, it includes excerpts from the writings of, inter alia, Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The first Dominican Mission in Mosul was established in 1750 and its Italian friars worked with local Christian communities for over a century before the Dominican Province of France took over operations in 1856. It was under the direction of the new superior, Fr. Hyacinthe Besson, that the mission’s activities expanded to include printing on a lithographic press. Soon after they also acquired a letterpress, which was significant as it became the first working typographic press in Iraq.
From 1861 to its confiscation during WWI, the press produced numerous books using Arabic, Syriac, Greek and Chaldean types, most of which were on religious subjects and intended for dispersal among local Christians. The present book is therefore something of an exception as it brings together a cornucopia of excepts from French literature, for the use of (presumably Iraqi) children learning French.
Apparently unrecorded, with no examples located in LibraryHub or OCLC.