Typesetting

The House Style

How a Matn book is set, from the page to the cover.

The page

Classics, translations and books in two languages are set on a page of 152 by 229 millimetres, six inches by nine. The text block is 92 mm wide, which gives about sixty characters to an English line, and the outer margin is 44 mm wide because the notes live there.¹ English is set in EB Garamond at 11.5 on 14 points, 37 lines to the page, and Arabic in Amiri at 13 on 21.5 points, 24 lines. The two languages never share a page, so each keeps its own grid.

An English page and an Arabic page, to scale. The note column is always on the outer edge; only the direction of the text changes.

Notes in the margin

The margin column has two lanes. The inner one, next to the text, holds the section numbers, which stay on the first line of their paragraph. The outer one holds the notes, each level with the line that carries its number. A note that would overlap the one above it moves down, never up.² Note numbers start again with each chapter. Section numbers run through the whole work and are the same in both languages, so a reader can cross from one to the other by number.

There are no footnotes and no endnotes. A note that runs past the foot of the page continues under the text after a short rule; if that happens more than once in a chapter, the notes are too long, and the longer material belongs in the introduction.

Kashida

Arabic lines are justified by stretching a letter where it joins the next, the way a scribe filled a line, and only then by widening the spaces between words. The stretch goes in set places, in this order of preference:

1After a seen, sheen, sad or dad in the middle or at the start of a word.
2Before a final ta marbuta, ha, dal or dhal.
3Before a final alef, ta, lam or kaf, and never inside lam-alef.
4Before a middle letter of the ba shape that comes before a final ra, ya or alef maqsura.
5Before a final waw, ain, qaf or fa.
6Before any other final letter.
7At any other join.

A word is stretched at one join only, and no line stretches more than two words. A word takes at most six tatweel widths, and whatever is left goes to the spaces. The last line of a paragraph is never stretched, nor is a heading, and a stretch never sits directly under one on the line above.

Show the stretch in red 0 tatweels added

في حيٍّ من احياءِ لندن الجديدة حيث يقلُّ الازدحام وتتَّسع الرحاب المتروكة من غير بناء بمساعي ارل ميث لتجديد الهواءِ وتطهير الدماءِ وانعاش الابدان بيت كبير بل قصر فخيم مبنيٌّ على نسق القلاع القديمة تحيط بهِ حديقة غنَّاء واسعة الارجاءِ ملتفة الاشجار هبَّت رياح الخريف على اشجارها ورياحينها فتورَّدت واغنتها عن الازهار حتى خُدِع النحل بها وصار يقع عليها ليتعلَّل بشيءٍ من الاري يجدهُ فيها

Spaces only

Kashida first, then spaces

Fatat Misr, page 1, as printed in 1905

Two fronts

A book in both languages opens from both covers. The English runs from one front and the Arabic from the other, both upright, and the two texts meet at a centre spread printed with the press’s pattern. Each half has its own front matter and its own page numbers, i, ii, iii in English and alif, ba, jim in Arabic. The section numbers are shared.

Nothing in the book is printed upside down. It is bound from the left, and the Arabic half sits in the printer’s file in reverse page order.

Covers

Each front is a page in its own language. The book’s opening sentences run once round a red title panel, the way an inscription runs round a tiled panel, or the hashiya round the matn. English runs clockwise from the top left and Arabic counter-clockwise from the top right, so the two fronts mirror each other, with the tops of the letters facing outward. The Arabic band is justified by kashida.

كان الكتاب في المخطوطات العربية يُبنى من طبقات. في وسط الصفحة المتنُ، وهو الأصل الذي يُقرأ أولًا ويُحفظ ويُنسخ قبل غيره، وحوله الشرحُ الذي يفسّره عبارةً عبارة، ثم الحواشي التي تعلّق على الشرح نفسه، تُكتب في الهوامش بخطٍّ أصغر، مائلةً أحيانًا، وربما بحبرٍ آخر. وكان القارئ يتنقّل بين هذه الطبقات كما يتنقّل المسافر بين مدنٍ متجاورة، يعرف في كل لحظة صاحبَ الصوت الذي يسمعه. ولم تُلغِ المطبعةُ هذا الترتيب كلَّه، فكثيرٌ من الكتب التي طُبعت في القاهرة أواخرَ القرن التاسع عشر حملت كتابين في صفحة واحدة، أحدهما في الوسط والآخر في الهامش داخل إطارٍ مسطَّر. ثم انتقلت الحواشي في الطبعات الحديثة إلى أسفل الصفحة أو إلى آخر الكتاب، وهذا أيسرُ على الطابع وأشقُّ على القارئ.

In an Arabic manuscript the book was built in layers. The matn sat in the middle of the page: the text itself, the part that was read first, learned by heart and copied before anything else. Around it ran the sharh, a commentary that explained the matn phrase by phrase, and around that the hawashi, glosses on the commentary written into the margins in a smaller hand, sometimes at an angle, sometimes in another ink. A reader moved between the layers the way you move between neighbouring towns, always knowing whose voice was speaking. Printing did not throw all of this away. Many books printed in Cairo in the late nineteenth century carried two works on one page, one in the middle and one in the margin inside a ruled frame. Modern editions mostly moved the notes to the foot of the page or the back of the book, which is easier for the printer and harder for the reader.

The two fronts of the press’s specimen, The Layered Page.

Endpapers

The pattern is the seal repeated on a tile of fifty cells, with four cells between one seal and the next. It is printed on the endpapers and on the centre spread of a two-fronts book. It is never used on a cover.