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Arabic printing thanks to Ukraine independence - in 1708: Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709) was the Hetman of the Cossack state, the Left Bank and the Dnipro Ukraine. Mazepa’s strategy was aimed at establishing the Ukrainian Church as a state church of the Ukrainian Hetmanate. 1/ 
This could be done by proving to the Oriental patriarchs that the transition of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv to the supremacy of the Moscow Patriarch in 1686 was non-canonical. One of his decisions included the publication of the Gospel in Arabic in Aleppo in 1708. /2
The printer was Abdallah Zakher el-Shammas (1684-1748), a Syrian typographer, goldsmith, scholar, and Catholic deacon. The Arabic script used is based on el Zakher’s own handwriting. /3
Representatives of the Patriarchate of Antioch set out to Baturyn, Chernihiv Oblast, the capital of the Cossack Hetmanate, to present the Gospel to their patron Ivan Mazepa, but they never reached the settlement. /4
On November 13, 1708, the Russian army, under the command of Alexander Menshikov, sacked and razed Baturyn, and slaughtered all of its inhabitants, with no mercy to women and children, or the elderly. /5
Ihor Ostash, Ambassador Extraordinary of Ukraine to Lebanon, began his search for the Arab copy of the Gospel in Lebanon. During a visit to the Balamand Monastery in Lebanon, Ostash came upon Mazepa’s Arab Gospel at the Centre for the Conservation of Antique Books. /6
Today, the gospel is stored and digitized for everyone's pleasure at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (). /7irbis-nbuv.gov.ua/dlib/item/0002…
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