PREFACE.

...Christ has made, I have labored. But that it might be fruitful, as much as my extreme poverty allowed, I gathered a great abundance of Arabic volumes and brought them into these provinces of our Latin world. I have the greatest number of these volumes, especially in the most ancient copies of the New Testament, in my book-chests in Venice. The rest, however, had been pledged six years ago to the most illustrious Prince Otto Henry, Duke of Bavaria, for two hundred gold coins. I believe they could not justly be paid for even with a thousand. I believe, however, that after his death, they are kept by his heirs as supreme treasures in great value and custody, even if they are not understood. For even one Cosmographer, Prince Abilfeda original: "Abilphedeas", could hardly be repaid for six hundred gold crowns. Among the others, however, the Damascene John of Damascus is present there in his own native Damascene Arabic tongue, for rendering an account of our faith to the entire world of the Ishmaelites the Muslim world.