Dar Ibn Rushd

Publishing house Dar Ibn Rushd was founded in 1990 and specializes in book publishing focused on the Orient, particularly on the area of the Middle East. It publishes language textbooks for Oriental languages such as Arabic, Indonesian or Turkish, dictionaries, translations of literary works by authors of the Orient, and also some works of Czech authors and publicists that are focused on similar topics as the publishing house. Dar Ibn Rushd has so far published around 300 titles. A special group of publications was created by a series of anthologies of modern short stories by authors from different parts of the Orient such as Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Morocco, India and Jordan. The translations of these literary works are often the first experience that Czech readers have with literature of that particular country. The publishing house Dar Ibn Rushd also published works of classical authors like Kahlil Gibran, Omar Khayyam or Sheikh Muhammad al-Nafzawi, usually translated by our distinguished orientalist experts. It has also published novels of two authors nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. It was a novel by the contemporary Korean author Han Malsook “Hymn of the Spirit” and a novel by the Turkish author Zülfü Livaneli entitled “Bliss”. The founder of Dar Ibn Rushd, Charif Bahbouh, has also published several of his books. He has authored or co-authored 70 books, mainly textbooks for Czech students of Arabic, but also for Arabic speakers learning Czech (Czech for Arabs, Arabic-Czech Dictionary, Czech-Arabic and Arabic-Czech Conversation). He is also bringing the Arab world closer through encyclopaedias or history books of various Arab countries, which he has written or co-authored. Some of the dictionaries and encyclopaedias also received prizes from the Union of Interpreters and Translators. On top of that, he has published two poetry collections in both Arabic and Czech and two books or Arab fairy-tales. In 1997, he read through 200 Arabic manuscripts and assisted in making them available to the general public. In cooperation with the Czech National Library, Albertina Icom Prague and UNESCO, he has published two brochures and a CD entitled The Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in Czech and English.