The article deals with the activities of the Maronite patriarch Gabriel German Farhat (1670–1732) in the field of the Arab bibliography. The author argues that by the 18th century AD in the Arabic-speaking literature of the Middle East, were used two types of introductions to the written texts, the Muslim and the Christian. The metalanguage, which was employed by Muslim authors in the introductions to their texts, was very convenient for constructing book-titles that by themselves built the “data base” of the so-called the Arabic Islamic “virtual catalogue”. The metalanguage used by Christian authors was different, and therefore in the library world of the Middle Ages two traditions were incompatible and therefore existed without intersecting. The Maronite Patriarch Gabriel German Farhat, being a bibliophile and a librarian, in his writings proposed organizing introductions to Christian texts in a Muslim manner, however, preserving their Christian content.The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Maronite writer Jibri`il Jarmanus Farhat (1670–1732) and his attempts to include the works of Christian Arab authors in the “virtual catalogue” of Arabic Muslim literature