[Hanafite school].MareMagnum
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Small folio (ca. 190 x 270 mm). Ottoman manuscript in Arabic on paper. (282) ff. Contemporary 15th-century Ottoman overlapping wallet-type binding, blind-stamped front-board with a blind-tooled frame and a blind-tooled centrepiece. Highly interesting 15th century Hanafite manuscript compendium on Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), dated 14 Rabi' al-awwal 825 AH, corresponding to 14 March 1422 CE. Although the manuscript contains popular and widespread Hanafite commentaries, a manuscript of this age is a rare survival. It includes the "explanation of hermetic subjects" (Hall al-mawadi' al-mughlaqa) by 'Ubayd Allah ibn Mas'ud Sadr al-Shari'a al-Thani al-Mahbubi (also known as Sadr al-Shari'a al-Asghar; d. 1347 CE) and a commentary by him on "Wiqayat al-riwaya fi masa'il al-Hidaya" by his grandfather Mahmud ibn Sadr al-Shari'a al-Awwal al-Mahbubi (13th century). Also included is a summary of the legal manual "Al-Hidaya" by 'Ali ibn Abi Bakr al-Marghinani (d. 1197), which is considered one of the most influential compendia of the Hanafi jurisprudence (fiqh). "Al-Hidayah" is actually a concise commentary on another work of him titled Bidayat al-Mubtadi'. The work contains many contemporary marginal and interlinear glosses in Arabic, making this 15th-century jurisprudential handbook with influential texts by some of the most important scholars from the Hanafite school of fiqh even more important. - The manuscript contains many marginal and interlinear glosses in Arabic. Binding a little worn around the edges and with a few scratches on the boards, rebacked spine and some other restorations to the binding in the Ottoman style, some inactive moulding and waterstaining in the last approximately third part of the book (without loss of text), paper edges slightly frayed, but an interesting 15th-century manuscript on Islamic law in acceptable condition and still in its contemporary binding.
4to (ca. 160 x 216 mm). Arabic manuscript on polished paper. 8 parts. 93 leaves, final blank leaf. Written in black ink throughout with red chapter headings, 19 lines, two columns and single column. Contemporary brown leather binding with gilt borders and recessed and gilt central ornament, stamped in relief. A fine, complete collected medical manuscript, including pharmacological and alchemical material. The principal section is formed by the "Urjuza fi l-tibb", or "Medical Poem" of Ibn Sina, which can be considered a poetic summary in 1326 verses of the author's great encyclopedic textbook, the Qanun. The verse form made it popular as a mnemonic in the process of transmitting the Canon's medical knowledge from master to student. The second part of the work is more directly concerned with anatomical matters, but also discusses the pulse and urine. - The following section is "Al-Maqala al-Aminiya fi 'l-fasd", a treatise in ten chapters on phlebotomy. It was written by Abul-Hasan Hibatallah ibn Said ibn al-Tilmidi (d. 1165 CE), the Christian physician to the Abbasid caliph Al-Muqtafi, hailed as one of the greatest medical men of his age. - A subsequent essay treats the refinement of chemical substances by burning and washing, also discussing the characteristics of the combustion of various metals, including gold, silver, steel, copper, and lead. Further parts concern the refinement of medicines (by Al-Hasan ibn Bahram al-Mutatabbib) and the treatment of poisonings in general, but also offering an alphabetical pharmacopoeia. - Leather covers professionally restored; modern marbled pastedowns. Internally quite clean; a few leaves show edge tears but without loss to text. Altogether a fine Arabic medical manuscript comprising a wide range of relevant material. GAL I, 457, 81 ("Manzuma fi 't-tibb"); GAL S I, 823. For al-Maqala al-Aminiya see GAL I, 487.
Small folio (188 x 278 mm). 9 volumes. X, 334; 309, (3); 276, (2); 298, (2); 235, (3); 328, (2); 429, (3); 382, (2); 335, (1) pp. Contemporary half leather over marbled boards. First French edition. Translation of the "'Aja'ib al-athar fi al-tarajim wa-al-akhbar" by 'Abd al-Rahman Jabarti (1754-1822): an important chronicle and source collection for the period of Ottoman rule in Egypt, an era largely marked by a dearth of historical sources from the inhabitants of the country. Jabarti's history is of particular importance for the early 19th century and the time of the French expedition, of which he gives a comprehensive account, as well as for the beginning of the regency of Muhammad Ali Pasha. Because of Jabarti's severely critical view of Muhammad Ali and his reign, the work was long banned in Egypt, and only after the accession of the Khedive Tewfiq did it see its first complete publication and translation (by Chefik Mansour bey, Abdulaziz Kalil bey, Gabriel Nicolas Kalil bey, and Iskender Ammoun effendi). - "The Cairo gentleman Al-Jabarti provides a remarkable, lucid and nuanced account on the French occupation in Egypt" (Fierro, 2). - A few insignificant edge tears or chips; a few paper flaws professionally repaired. Spines rubbed and scuffed; spine-ends chipped or repaired. Generally a very finely preserved set of this rare and important work on Egypt. OCLC 2513833. Not in Ibrahim-Hilmy.
Folio (202 x 330 - 214 x 325 mm). Together 39 pp. Three typescript drafts in French and English of the 1957 Petroleum Act, a pioneering document of contractual relationships in the oil industry. The personal copies of Fuad Rouhani (1907-2004), later the first Secretary General of OPEC, with his annotations. - In the years immediately following the signing of the 1954 Consortium Agreement, the historic agreement that provided Western oil companies with 50% ownership in Iranian oil production, the fledgling national Iranian oil Industry received an enormous moral boost from the exploration activities conducted around Qom. The discovery of the Alborz oilfield and the Sarajeh gas field by the Iranian Oil Company not only proved Iran's growing technical capacity but it also helped to give Iran a prestige not hitherto enjoyed by any other oil producing and exporting country. Against this background it is therefore hardly surprising that when Enrico Mattei, the Chairman of ENI (the Italian State Oil Company), decided to look for oil supplies in the Middle East by offering new contractual terms, he should turn to Iran and that the government of Iran and the NIOC should greet him with open arms. What had prompted Mattei to come forward with the participation formula was his resentment at the treatment he had received from the major oil companies by being excluded from the Consortium Agreement. Since access to crude oil resources was of utmost importance for Italy and ENI, a way had to be found for entry into the Middle East oil scene. NIOC and ENI thus pioneered a new form of contractual relationship, thereafter known as 75/25 profit sharing, breaking the hallowed fifty-fifty arrangement and heralding a new era in international oil agreements. - Traces of stapling; margins somewhat worn.
4to. 72, (14), VIII pp.; (2) ff. with engravings. Text set in roman, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic type. With a small Portuguese woodcut coat of arms on the title-page and 4 engraved plates on 2 leaves bound at the end of the book. Later blue paper wrappers. First and only edition of an instruction manual for the compositors of the Portuguese Impressão Regia on the proper setting of Greek, Hebrew and Arabic type. It was written by Custodio José de Oliveira (d. 1812), professor of Greek at the Colégio Real dos Nobres in Lisbon and one of the Directores Litterarios of the Impressão Regia, serving until 1807, for which he wrote the present work. The present work is identified as "very useful" by Innocencio and according to him, it was the only Portuguese manual on typesetting he knew so far ("Trabalho mui aproveitavel, para o tempo em que sahiu, e o unico que sobre o assumpto temos até agora escripto orginalmente em portuguez"). Oliveira shows in both the tables and inserts within the text the alphabets and numbers in Greek, Hebrew and Arabic with their roman equivalents. The last four plates (printed on both sides of two leaves) show common ligatures and abbreviations in Greek. The present copy of this very rare work is complete with all plates, the "Prefação aos compositores typograficos" (numbered I-VIII) and the seven-leaf dedication, all bound at the end of the book. An important work on the subject of typesetting and the only work on this topic known in Portuguese. - With the bookplate of Américo Cortez Pinto (1896-1979) on the front wrapper, a Portuguese physician, writer, poet and historian who also wrote some works on the art of printing. Front wrapper half loose and back wrapper loose, spine partly gone, wrappers a little frayed, discoloured and slightly stained. Paper edges slightly frayed as it is an untrimmed copy, sometimes with the bolts unopened. Some marginal staining, very minor foxing, but overall a very rare work on printing and typography which is still in fine condition. Bigmore/Wyman II, 90. Innocencio II, 461. The literature of printing: a catalogue of the library illustrative of the history and art of typography, calcography and lithography of Richard M. Hoe, p. 85. Not in Porbase.
4to. 4 pp. on 4 ff. On headed stationery. Draft of a letter to Mohammed Salman, the Oil Minister of Iraq, about the administration of Abadan port, claimed both by Iran and Iraq, reflecting his concern with achieving consent in political matters as well as matters of the oil industry: "The Port of Abadan lies incontestably within the jurisdiction of Iran, and when the Iranian Government takes steps to provide its own harbourmasters in that Port it is doing nothing else than exercising a normal function of administration within its own waters. The past history of this question, and the fact that the Port of Basra has supplied harbourmasters for the Port of Abadan for some time [...] could not possibly deprive Iran of its right as an independent State to exercise sover[e]ignty over its territory. And yet this is what the attitude of your Government towards this question involves [...] If we cannot remove a difference of this simple nature, in which Iran is so evidently in the right; if the Iranian people are to be told that Iraq wishes to prevent Iran from administering the Port of Abadan in the same manner as Iraq administers, for instance, the Port of Basra; if the surprising statement of General Shawi that this matter concerns not the Iranian State but the Oil Consortium (which is foreign to both of us) is to be represented as the serious view of your Government, then how can we hope ever to achieve that harmony and unity of views and effective position on matters of joint importance, for example in relation ot OPEC, which is the first condition of success in the difficult common tasks which lie ahead of us? [...]". - With several corrections; the header "private and confidential" deleted.
Small folio (208 x 284 mm). (2), 115, (1) pp. With 2 folding charts, 1 full-page sketch map, 84 small sketch maps and 48 b/w half-tone photo illustrations. Original black cloth printed with purple type. First edition. A confidential air route book, compiled for the use of pilots flying from Cairo to Karachi during WWII, covering the main air route of the time that passed through the Arabian Gulf at staging posts in Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan, Bahrain, Sharjah, and India. - The handbook covers all aspects for flying within the Middle East including distress signal code tables, tips for forced landings, colour-printed route maps, radio beacon maps, emergency airfield maps, and double-sided airfield leaves dedicated to single airfields along the designated route. Inserted stapled updates and small corrections show the importance of up-to-date information for navigation within the shifting sands of the country where the pilots were operating. - It is presumed that these hardbound versions were either used for office reference or as early print runs. Later, cord-bound copies were created for pilots' use in active service, presumably to minimise costs of production and tailor the information to strictly which flight the pilot was completing. - This edition is stamped number 498, suggesting a limited print-run. Boards a little water-stained and warped, two white stains to front board, otherwise good. Interior exceptionally clean and fresh. Institutionally rare: LibraryHub locates just a single holding at the IWM.
4to. 160 pp. Ottoman Turkish text set in Arabic characters. Half-title on the upper wrapper and the first page of text are set within a decorative printed frame. With an integral manuscript French translation of the text in the margins. Original publisher's printed paper wrappers. - With: (II) [Shaikhzade Ahmed Misri] / Belleteste, [Henri Nicolas]. Contes Turcs en langue turque, extraits du roman intitulé, les quarante vizirs. [= Kirk vezir hikâyeleri ...]. Ibid., 1812. 4to. (2), 258, (2) pp. The text is entirely in Ottoman Turkish except for an additional title-page in French. Both Arabic and French title-pages include the vignette of the French Imprimerie Impériale. Blue wrappers with a white printed title label on the spine, stored in a custom-made case: half red leather with the title in gold on the spine and white and green decorated sides. Two excellent examples of Arabic type printing by the French Imprimerie Impériale: the 1812 edition of "the history of the forty viziers" in Ottoman Turkish. This collection of Turkish folk tales is a variation of the Thousand and One Nights stories. These frame stories play an important role in the storytelling tradition of the Middle East and often form the basis (Middle) Eastern literature in general. Examples of these stories are found in early Indian, Iranian and Arabic sources, but the exact origin of the stories of the forty viziers is not clear. The stories and/or the first translations of the stories from Arabic were attributed to Ahmed-i Misri and/or Seyhzade (or Sheykh-Zada), about whom nothing is known. These names were possibly pseudonyms of the actual authors-translators who did not want to be associated with stories that were composed in prose, had suggestive or crude passages, and were compiled from other earlier frame stories. - According to extant sources, the entire collection of folk tales concerning the stories of the viziers could contain eighty stories, forty of the viziers during the day and forty of the women during the night. In addition, the stories could also include various advice sections, other small stories, Arabic, Persian and Turkish poems, verses, hadiths, dreams and their interpretations. Different compositions and adaptations would differ in size and would contain varying sets of stories from the complete collection. - I: A unique annotated early 19th century copy of "Kirk vezir hikâyeleri" (The stories of forty queens), known as the "History of the forty viziers", containing an integral and literal translation of the first 160 pages of the Ottoman Turkish work. The translation and further annotations on Ottoman Turkish syntax and vocabulary are written in a (near) contemporary hand in brown ink. The marginal annotations were probably written around the 1820s by a French orientalist. This particular manuscript translation is unique and one of the very first French translation of these stories. Another adaptation of the stories, containing 19 stories and the introduction, was translated into French by François Pétis de la Croix as "L'histoire de la sultane de Perse et des vizirs", published in Paris in 1722. - II: The present copy is a complete example of the 1812 edition. It contains forty stories, including the introduction, the story of (and dedication to) Sultan Mahmud, the frame story, twenty stories of the viziers, and twenty stories of the women. - Both works are compiled by the French orientalist Henri-Nicolas Belleteste (Belletête, ca. 1746-1808) and published posthumously. Belleteste was educated in Oriental languages and in 1798 he was appointed government interpreter. He subsequently served as a military interpreter during the Egyptian Campaign led by Napoleon Bonaparte (1798-1801). He published an Arabic vocabulary for military use and together with French orientalist Jean-Daniel Kieffer (1767-1833), Belleteste translated the Bulletins de la Grande Armée into Turkish for Napoleon's campaigns from 1805 to 1807. He had taken on the project of translating a collection of Turkish stories, entitled in French "Les Quarante Vizirs" (the forty viziers), allegedly from a manuscript found in Egypt. Unfortunately, he died unexpectedly at the age of 30 in 1808, thus leaving the work unfinished. Nevertheless, an edition of the Ottoman Turkish text Belleteste was translating was published in 1812, expertly printed in Arabic characters by the French Imprimerie Impériale, of which the present two works are examples. - I: With the integral manuscript translation of the text into French in a contemporary (ca. 1820s) hand in brown ink in the margins. Front wrapper detached, spine damaged, edges frayed, lacking the back wrapper and the last 96 pages of the work. - II: Without the frequently missing 48 pp. of Belleteste's unfinished French translation. Wrappers are slightly stained and slightly damaged, mainly around the spine and the edges, without affecting the integrity of the binding. The text has generous, uncut margins, thus the edges are slightly frayed. The custom-made case is slightly scuffed around the corners and edges. Otherwise in good condition. - Overall, these works present an extraordinary example of early 19th century Arabic printing by the French Imprimerie Impériale together with a unique manuscript translation of the text of the "history of the forty Viziers", into French by an unidentified early 19th-century orientalist. Atabey 908 (incomplete). Chauvin VIII, p. 18, no. 52. Zenker I, 729. Brunet 17781. Gay/Lemonnier I, 718. Not in Blackmer.
Folio (282 x 372 mm). 20 collotype prints mounted on 18 sheets loose in red gilt cloth portfolio as issued, complete with half-title, list of plates, title and preface. One of the earliest photographic documents of Mecca and the Hajj, preceded only by the photographs of Muhammed Sadiq Bey published in 1881 (Sotheby's, 4 June 1998: £1,250,000). Much rarer than the author's similarly titled "Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka", a portfolio of lithographs to accompany the "Mekka" books which Snouck had published after his return from the Arabian Peninsula. - "Following the publication of 'Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka', Hurgronje received a letter from his doctor in Makkah, whom he had taught the art of photography. The letter contained new photographs of the hajj which were of such great interest that he decided in 1889 to publish his 'Bilder aus Mekka' [...] The photographs provide an insight into the world of Makkah's inhabitants, pilgrims from all over the Islamic world, in addition to the sharif of Makkah, the Turkish governor, and various religious and secular figures" (Badr el-Hage, p. 46f.). - "In 1981 F. H. S. Allen and C. Gavin first identified the earliest Arabian photographer by deciphering his elaborately calligraphed signatures, which without exception had been erased from the plates reproduced by Snouck Hurgronje: 'Futugrafiyat al-Sayyid 'Abd al-Ghaffar, tabib Makka' (The Photography of the Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar, physican of Mecca). This princely eye surgeon had been host to the young Snouck in Mecca immediately after the Dutchman's conversion to Islam. Snouck claimed to have taught his host how to use a camera and attributes to him (without ever mentioning his name) the pictures reproduced in 'Bilder aus Mekka'". - Light spotting, title and text leaves frayed at inner edge (not affecting text), occasional minor stains or wear to edges of mounts, covers rather marked and stained. Very rare: only two copies at auctions internationally during the past decades (the last, at Sotheby's in 2006, was incomplete, lacking all the text leaves). Macro 1233. Badr el-Hage. Saudi Arabia Caught in Time. Reading, 1997. F. E. Peters. The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Place. Princeton University Press 1996.
4to. (8), 190, (4) pp. With the academy's woodcut device on the title-page (incorporating the Portuguese coat-of-arms, Athena's owl and Hermes's staff). Set in roman, italic and Arabic types. Modern green morocco, gold-tooled spine with a red morocco spine label with title in gold and the imprint in gold at the foot of the spine, marbled endpapers. First and only edition of a collection of letters written in Arabic during the reigns of Kings Manuel I and João III of Portugal (numbered 1-58 in chronological order, the dated letters from 1503 to 1528), from the official Portuguese state correspondence, with the original Arabic and a parallel Portuguese translation. The letters came from North Africa, the Gulf, East Africa, India and the East Indies. The writers include kings, princes, governors, wazirs, sheikhs and noblemen, including Kings "Mahomed Xáh" and "Mir Abanasar" of Ormus, King "Azarkam" of Barus in Sumatra, and kings of Fez, Malindi and Calicut/Kozhikode. They are especially important for the light they shed on Portugal's East Indian trade, but also provide a rare primary source of information about Islamic leaders for whom little documentation has survived. The original Arabic appears in the inside columns with the Portuguese translation in the outside columns, and the apparatus and notes are in Portuguese. João de Sousa (1734-1812), born in Damascus, came to Portugal in 1750 and was appointed the first professor of Arabic at the University of Lisbon. - The Royal Printing Office in Lisbon had used the present Arabic type in 1774 for Antonio Baptista, Instituições da lingua Arabica. The form of the Arabic type may have been influenced by Robert Granjon's of this size, cut in 1586, his smallest Arabic, which was at this time in possession of the Propaganda Fide in Rome, but the direct model and the circumstances of the cutting remain unknown. The type here measures 96 mm/20 lines (14 point). It is not the Arabic type acquired by the Biblioteca Real in Madrid in 1751 for the 1760 Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, which came from the Voskens and Clerk foundry in Amsterdam. - The first page of the first letter is very slightly soiled, otherwise internally fine and clean. Overall in very good condition. A remarkable primary source for numerous Arabic-speaking leaders and their relations with Portugal in the early 1500s. Macro 2098. Palau 320779. Schnurrer 186. Innocêncio IV, 41-42. Palha 2777. Krek, Typographia Arabica, p. 36, no. 3. Streit XVII, 6441. Not in Blackmer or Atabey.
A pair of original watercolours with traces of pencil, measuring 333 x 485 mm each. Framed and matted, captioned on the mat in Indian ink. Exceptionally rare: a pair of near-contemporary watercolours reflecting the English popular imagination of a crucial event in UAE history, the disastrous first sack of Ras Al-Khaimah in late 1809. - The punitive expedition was carried out by a 16-ship fleet of the British navy headed by HMS Chiffone under the command of Captain Wainwright, allegedly in retaliation for repeated acts of piracy against British ships perpetrated by the Qawasim, but certainly a convenient means for the British to expand their power in the Gulf on behalf of the East India Company. The battle, a massacre that is still locally remembered in story and song, was the beginning of a new era: that of British control in the Gulf. - The fleet sailed from Bombay on 14 September 1809, reaching Muscat on 11 November and descending on Ras Al-Khaimah in the dawn of the 12th. All day long the British ships bombarded the town’s defences and homes. In the early morning of 13 November, 600 of the more than 1,300 British soldiers landed on the beach and, after bitter fighting, soon breached Ras Al-Khaimah’s defences. Having demolished the town, the Chiffonne and the rest of the fleet sailed along the coast, wrecking additional fortresses. - The atmospheric watercolours depict the landing operation, with the Chiffonne firing its cannons and the British soldiers reaching the beach, in one picture setting fire to a pirate ship. The set of drawings at hand, apparently the work of a talented enthusiast, may even pre-date the publication of the aquatints by Richard Temple in his famous “Sixteen Views of Places in the Persian Gulph Taken in the Years 1809-10”, published in 1813 from his own drawings made on location as a private in the 65th Regiment. - Provenance: once sold through the London rare book and autograph dealer Frank T. Sabin (1846-1915), with his labels on the back. Latterly in a private UK collection. Cf. Sultan Muhammad Al-Qasimi, The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf (London, 1985). Charles E. Davies, The Blood-Red Arab Flag (Exeter, 1997).
Oblong album (ca. 260 x 200 mm). 44 silver gelatin photographs (including 3 loose) in slightly varying sizes (ca. 18.5 x 24 cm). Grey faux-leather photo album consisting of 30 clear plastic inserts with a small white label on the front board: "42 x Israël 1967 23-24-25 Juli". A rare collection of fascinating original photographs capturing the first Western tourists in Israel and Israeli captured territories approximately a month after the Six-Day War in 1967 by Dutch journalist and photographer Bianca Maria Dony. The 44 photos in the album show the passenger ship SS Pegasus, soldiers, local people in the streets of Jerusalem and other cities, an early war monument, checkpoints, destroyed military vehicles and other remnants of the war. The album is from the archive of the photographer; some of these photographs were sold to and published in national (Dutch) and international newspapers and magazines, while others remained unpublished. - Bianca Dony was part of a group of 150 Christian tourists from various European countries, who were now - after the Israeli capture of these areas - able to visit the holy places in the old city of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other places that had previously been inaccessible. "It is perhaps self-evident to suggest that military conquest shares something with tourism because both involve encounters with "strange" landscapes and people. [...] The gradual dissolution of borders between Israel and its newly occupied territories in war's aftermath generated numerous new possibilities for Israeli travel to places that had been inaccessible since 1948. What resulted was a tourist event of massive proportions, passionately documented by the Israeli popular media of the period" (Stein, p. 647). The tourists in the present photographs were the first of many and Dony took this opportunity to not only document the trip itself but also the general aftermath of the war. - The Six-Day War is also known as the June War, the Third Arab-Israeli War, or Naksah, and it was a brief war that took place from June 5 to June 10 1967. It was a conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, including Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq, over Israel's supposed plan to invade parts of Syria and other neighbouring countries. The war ended in a decisive Israeli victory, which included the capture of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the old city of Jerusalem, and Golan Heights by Israel. The status of these territories has since then remained a major point of contention in the general Arab-Israeli conflict. - With an additional leaf in the inside front pocket of the album containing notes of how many photographs were sold to different newspapers and magazines (including 10 to the "Haagsche Courant"), written in blue and red ink and in pencil. Added to the first photograph in the album is a newspaper clipping from the "Jerusalem Post" with the headline "Haifa direct to old city for first time" about the first tourists visiting Israel after the Six-Day War. Some of the clear plastic inserts have small round white stickers on them with different abbreviations, connecting the photographs to the newspapers and magazines that (possibly) printed them (for example "HC" for Haagsche Courant etc.). 3 photographs are loosely inserted into the album and 2 of these are duplicates of other photo's in the album, the 2 duplicates contain a blue stamp "foto bianca dony 147 Malakkastraat Den Haag - Tel. 5582540 Giro 303814" and a manuscript caption in red ink on the back. Most other photographs are simply numbered in pencil on the back. This rare collection of 44 historically significant photographs is in very good condition. Cf. Rebecca L. Stein, "Souvenirs of conquest: Israeli occupations as tourist events", International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 40, no. 4 (2008) pp. 647-669.
Oblong folio (560 x 370 mm). 101 plates (72 lithophotographs "Procedé Poitevin", 2 lithographs, and 27 plans, of which 10 folding) and 4 leaves of letterpress text. Stored loosely in contemporary marbled boards with original printed cover label; cloth spine professionally renewed. Cloth ties. Rare, early photobook on the archaeological excavations in Turkey and the Levant during the 1850s, a work which assured the architect-explorer Pierre Tremaux (1818-95) an eminent place in the history of photography. Includes views of Aphrodisias, Corycus, Ephesus, Hierapolis, Jerusalem, Magnesia, Milet, Perga, Priene, Seleucia, Smyrna, Tarsus, etc. - The calotypes here reproduced are among the earliest photographs taken in Asia Minor and are thus of great documentary interest. They were lithographed using the process discovered in 1855 by Alphonse Poitevin (1811-82), later awarded the Grand Prix du Duc de Luynes; Trémaux's work was one of the first to use this method. - "Pierre Trémaux was an architect who trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He was also interested in travel, ethnology, architecture and geography. He is known for one epic series of voyages to Asia Minor, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The fruits of these travels were published in a series of books" (Jacobson). Having set out in 1847, Trémaux began taking photographs around 1853-54. While the results of his efforts were technically uneven, obliging him to substitute his salt prints with lithographs, the rare images that survive have ensured the photographer's lasting reputation. The entire subscription was announced for a series of 215 plates provisionally titled "Atlas de vues pittoresques, scenes des moeurs, types de vegetation remarquable", but the publication was interrupted in 1864, never to be completed. - Some edge flaws and duststaining to margins. Scattered foxing, more pronounced in some examples, others nearly flawless. Exceptionally rare: the work has appeared at auction only three times in 25 years; it was missing from the two great orientalist collections of Atabey and Blackmer. Provenance: from the collection of the French engineer and archaeologist Paul Gaudin (1858-1921), a major patron of the Asia Minor collections in the Louvre, the Istanbul Museum, British Museum, and other institutions. Ken Jacobson, Odalisques & Arabesques: Orientalist Photography 1839-1925 (Quaritch, 2007), p. 273. Goldschmidt & Naef, The Truthful Lens: A Survey of the Photographically Illustrated Book 1844-1914 (New York, 1980), p. 225. Andre Jammes & Eugenia Parry Janis, The Art of French Calotype (Princeton, 1983), p. 251.
Diazoprint map, 111.5 x 75.4 cm. Scale 1:1,000,000. Folded. Highly detailed map of the Arabian Peninsula's coast from Abu Dhabi (Abu Al Abyad island) and Ras al-Khaimah in today's United Arab Emirates to Ras al-Hadd and south to Salala in Dhofar, Oman. The legend identifies wells, towns and villages, wadis, scarps, edges of sand, quicksand, and tracks. Political boundaries are omitted. The latest surveys incorporated are those undertaken by Nick Fallon, Douglas Michael Morton and René Wetzel in the mid- and later 1950s, suggesting that the present map - identified as "TP_773 (Revised)" in the lower left corner but not traced in any institutional collection worldwide - was one of a very small number produced for the internal use of a geological exploration team in the 1960s, when the first discoveries of oil in commercial quantities intensified exploration efforts both in the soon-to-be-independent Trucial States and in Oman. - Light staining and wear; a few minor tears professionally repaired.
Folio (210 x 330 mm). 5 pp. on 5 ff. French draft of the historic business deal between Britain and Persia that would initiate the era of oil in the Middle East. - The chain of events leading to Persia entering the international oil scene began with Antoine Ketabci Khan, the Persian commissioner general at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Ketabci Khan, of Armenian descent, had held several posts in the Persian government, including the directorship of the customs service. Although the ostensible reason for Ketabci’s visit was the opening of the Paris Exhibition, his main purpose was to find an investor in Europe willing to take up the petroleum concession in Persia. In Paris, Ketabci sought the aid of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, formerly (1887-90) the British minister in Tehran, who suggested William Knox D’Arcy, an English entrepreneur and financier who had made a fortune in gold mining in Australia and was eager to examine the proposition. On 28 May 1901 the prodigal Mozaffar-al-Din Shah granted D’Arcy an oil concession valid for sixty years, with exclusive rights to oil exploration in the entire country apart from the five northern provinces of Azerbaijan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Astarabad, and Khorasan. These provinces were excluded to avoid offending Russia, which regarded the northern part of Persia as its own sphere of influence, in the same way that Britain saw southern Persia as falling in its own orbit. In return, D’Arcy agreed to pay the Persian government twenty thousand pounds in cash, with another twenty thousand pounds worth of shares, as well as an annual royalty which was defined somewhat vaguely as equal to 16 percent of “annual net profits”. - Small rust stains to first leaf; slightly creased.
4to. 6, (1), 5, 4 pp. In French, English and Persian. Contemporary printed wrappers. Exceedingly rare article defending the oil nationalisation movement in Iran. Directed at Iranian students in the West, the account aims to clarify "the misunderstandings that prevail in the countries where you study", describing the injustice of foreign oil exploration in Iran leading up to several nationalisation laws passed between 1944 and 1951, which prohibited any concessions being granted to foreigners. - Somewhat dampstained near upper gutter. No more than 3 copies traceable in libraries internationally (all at the Mossadegh Foundation in Geneva).
4to. 36 pp. With several photographic prints and tables. Original printed wrappers. Stapled. Bulletin of the National Iranian Oil Company featuring several images of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, during three inauguration ceremonies. He is depicted opening the 1,200 kilometre Iranian Gas Trunkline, the offshore installations of the Iranian Marine International Oil Company (IMINOCO), and the newly erected Shahpur Chemical Complex in Bandar Shapur. Apart from commemorating these inaugurations in text and image, the present issue includes an English translation of article 11 of the 1957 Petroleum Act as well as tables and statistics of Iranian oil production and "world oil news". - Extremities minimally worn.
4to. 937-959, (1) pp. Original printed wrappers. Stapled. Exceedingly rare paper on international agreements in the oil industry by Fuad Rouhani (1907-2004), the first Secretary General of OPEC. First presented in early 1962 at the United Nations petrol conference in New York, it discusses legal issues of the oil industry, especially adressing the problem of the uneven distribution of profits between oil companies and the countries in possession of the reservoirs: "On sait toutefois que ces dernières années les gouvernements des pays qui ont accordé des concessions ont acquis la conviction qu'il existe un écart trop grand entre les bénéfices que les compagnies retirent de l'indutrie qu'elles financent et les rentrées du pays qui possède les gisements" (p. 949). - Right edge slightly warped, otherwise very well preserved. Offprint from "Revue de l'Institut Français du Pétrole et Annales des combustibles liquides", vol. XVIII, no. 6. An English version is held at Pepperdine University Library in Malibu, California; no other copy traceable in libraries internationally.
A total of 382 topographic maps, colour-printed, ca. 58 x 45 cm. Constant ratio linear horizontal scale. In Russian (Cyrillic). Most of the Soviet Union's 1:200,000 General Staff map quadrangles showing the Arabian Peninsula: from the Russian series of maps produced during the Cold War, based on high-quality satellite imagery, but usually also ground reconnaissance. While there are a few lacunae in the eastern and central part of the Peninsula, mainly concerning Oman and the UAE, and a few Saudi Arabian quadrangles are lacking, most of the area is well-covered. Assembled continuously, the quadrangles would form an enormous map spanning ca. 13 x 11 metres!. - Products of a massive, clandestine cartographic project begun under Stalin and ultimately encompassing the entire globe, the Soviet General Staff maps are today noted for their extreme precision. Indeed, even in post-Soviet times they provide the most reliable mapping for many remoter parts of the world: "Soviet-era military maps were so good that when the United States first invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, American pilots relied on old Russian maps of Afghanistan. For almost a month after the United States began a bombing campaign to help oust the Taliban government, American pilots were guided by Russian maps dating back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s" (Davies/Kent, p. xi). - Although the details of the cartographic programme evolved over the decades, its overall system and plan remained remarkably constant. "The basic quadrangle is the 1:1,000,000 sheet spanning 4° latitude by 6° longitude [...] Each 1:1,000,000 sheet is [...] subdivided into 36 1:200,000 sheets in a six-by-six grid [... They] normally contain on the reverse side a detailed written description of the districts (towns, communications, topography, geology, hydrology, vegetation, and climate) together with a geological sketch map" (ibid., p. 19-21). "Printing such large-format plans in so many colors with near-perfect print registration itself testifies to the skill of the printers in the military map printing factories across the former Soviet Union. The quality of printing reflects the level of training and the reliability of humidity-control equipment and the electricity supply at the time" (ibid., p. 6f.). - The 1:200,000-scale maps are specifically labelled "For Offical Use". Indeed, all General Staff maps de facto constituted closely guarded military material, none of which became available in the West before the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. - Light traces of folds, occasional wrinkles and a few odd edge flaws, but altogether in excellent condition. Cf. J. Davies / A. J. Kent, The Red Atlas (Chicago/London, 2017).
8vo. (24), 216 (misnumbered as 226), (8) pp. (pagination skips from pp. 80 to pp. 91 due to a printers' error, with no missing text). 18th century full leather ruled in blind and gilt, titled in gilt on red morocco spine label. Early English account of Muslim North Africa. An early example of notoriously difficult Arabic typesetting appears in the index of 'Moorish Words' at the rear, where Arabic terms are listed in both romanized and Arabic alphabets. - The Reverend Lancelot Addison (1632-1703), father of the essayist Joseph Addison, lived and worked as a chaplain in Tangier in northwest Morocco for seven years, which provided the basis for his historical accounts and gave him some knowledge of Arabic. Here he discusses, with some editorialising, the marital dramas of Moroccan dynastic struggles as well as the local traditions of cattle farming, and explains the camel to his European audience. - Leather rubbed and scuffed; spine, binding, and corners repaired; some offsetting to endpapers and half-title; light toning and foxing. Contemporary handwritten ownerships "Tho. Willughby" to front free endpaper and "T. Willughby" to title-page, probably belonging to the influential Tory politician Thomas Willoughby, 1st Baron Middleton (1672-1729), second son of the Warwickshire naturalist Francis Willughby (1635-72).
8vo. VI, (7)-69, (1) pp. Publisher's original green printed wrappers. First edition of the story of Nur al-Din and Shams al-Din, edited by the French oriental scholar (Jacques-)Auguste Cherbonneau (1813-82), professor at the Collège Arabe Française in Algier. Arabic text with French notes. - Well preserved. Chauvin VI, 102, no. 270, 2. OCLC 4432899.
Engraved map. 60 x 84 cm. Constant ratio linear horizontal scale ca. 1:1,500,000. With insert maps: "A Plan of the Harbour of Suez" and "A Plan of the Harbour of Tor". Rare map covering the Red Sea from Jeddah in the south to the Gulf of Suez in the north. Published as part of Robert Sayer's "Complete East-India pilot or Oriental Navigator" (1778ff., subsequently reissued by Laurie & Whittle), it is based on D'Après de Mannevillette's "Neptune Oriental" (1745), incorporating information gleaned from the 1762-63 surveys of Carsten Niebuhr. - A few professionally repaired edge tears. OCLC 733624449.
117 x 78 cm. Constant ratio linear horizontal scale: 1:5,000,000. Relief shown by hachures, contours, and spot heights. Depth shown by soundings. Loosely stored within printer wrappers. Third edition of this German wartime map of the Middle East, parts of Asia, and India, first published thus in 1940. Based on "Stielers Handatlas" and issued within Perthes' "Ubique terrarum" series (no. 20). - In excellent state of preservation, detached from its original wrappers. OCLC 164843864.
A single hand-carved woodblock (ca. 170 by 110/92 by 220 mm) for use as printing block, together with a print on 18th century paper (165 x 105 mm). Woodblock in Ottoman Turkish for a Hebrew publication of the Song of Solomon, probably produced in the Ottoman regions of the Levant for a rural printing press. A rare survival of a printing tool, and also an important witness to cross-cultural printing for minority audiences in the Ottoman world. - Includes a print of the text reading "Safr Nishd al-Nishad li-Suleyman wa'ighal ba-l'Abraniyat Sir Hashirim", printed on a piece of 18th-century paper pasted to a cutting from a Croatian printed book ("Pasha Duhovna", on Spirituality and the Passover). - Some small wormholes in the wood, post-dating the print; carved side stained black from ink used for printing. Printing devices such as this are often discarded or recycled and rarely survive in such condition as the present example.
8vo (170 x 253 mm). 38, (2), 112 pp. With a wood-engraved portrait of Abou Naddara and numerous illustrations. Modern marbled half calf with gilt-stamped spine. Silk divider. Inscribed to Paul Leclerc, "ami de l'Égypte, hommage respectueux du Cheikh Abou Naddara", also signed in Arabic. - "Abou Naddara" was the first Arabic magazine to feature cartoons (with captions in French and Arabic), as well as the first work to use in the press a form of colloquial Arabic, radically different from the literary form. - The Egyptian journalist James Sanua ("Ya'qub Rufa'il Sanu'" in Arabic, but usually known simply by his pseudonym, Abou Naddara, "father of spectacles") was born into a family of Sephardic Jews in Cairo. He played an important role in the development of the Arabic theatre in the 1870s, but it was as a satirical journalist that he became best known, targeting the Khedive as well as the British interlopers. He founded the satirical magazine "Abou Naddara" in 1877, which immediately enjoyed a broad appeal and was quickly suppressed; of the 15 issues that appeared between March and April 1877, no copies are known. Sanua went into exile in 1878, but his celebrated journal, reproduced lithographically from manuscript in Arabic and French, continued to appear, printed in Paris at a shop aptly located in the Passage du Caire in the 2e arrondissement. Within Egypt, where the magazine's smaller format allowed it to be smuggled inside other larger newspapers, its circulation was considerable, with possibly over 3000 copies of each issue printed. There is evidence of its presence in the highest echelons of Egyptian society, and its content focused on the political and financial turmoil in Egypt, as Sanua was undoubtedly privy to information from friends and informants well-placed inside administrative circles. - Extremely rare. Loosely inserted is a folded original issue of the "Journal Oriental" ("Directeur & Rédacteur en chef: J. Sanua Abou Naddara"), no. 8, dated 25 September 1886 (entirely lithographed in Arabic). OCLC 25737746.