Georg Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Litteratur is the main handbook of Arabic Christian literature. Rather to my surprise I found it offered for sale by an Italian bookdealer, deastore.com. The first volume, which deals with all the translations into Arabic, is only available on CDROM; the other four in book form at around 20 euros a shot. I ordered all these; the CDROM proved unavailable, but the books arrived today. Interestingly for a book published in the 50’s they were new (anastatic reprints, tho), unbound, with uncut pages. They were despatched by Federal Express, so arrived very quickly indeed once the order was ready. Recommended.
I did find reference online to a possible English translation of Graf, but the supposed publisher (now defunct) was prosecuted for fraud for taking money for non-existent books. I think we can take it that none ever existed. This is a pity, for what else is there in English?
Later: I have now skimmed through vol.2, covering writers to 1450 AD. My German is nothing special, but it is remarkable how much information one can pick up even so. The limited number of Maronite authors, the scope and kinds of works. It is actually a useful exercise in self-education!
I hope to post online the table of contents of vol.2, perhaps with a note or two which at least should allow people to get some idea of who wrote when for whom on what. Mind you, this leads to the question of what languages include horizontal lines above the vowels, opening and closing apostrophes, and the ‘s’ with a hat on it? My OCR tends to strip these out!
Later still: the table of contents is here.
My German needs some help too, but I’ve started a blog to help people like us. In “Theological German” I’m currently posting brief readings from D. Bonhoeffer’s letters with vocabulary helps. I may eventually post a few brief selections from letters of Willamowitz or other classicists. Reading anything of a serious nature will help.
I also have a little Egyptology blog that is mainly a list of books and links to a few important sites. It is “Bad Bird” ndjs.wordpress.com.