ANNOTATED OTTOMANS
FARIS, Ahmad.
Abdaʻ ma-kan fi suwar Salitan Al ʻUthman … Album des souverains Ottomans édité par Selim Faris Effendy directeur du journal arabe Eljawaib, Constantinople.
Leipzig, Carl Garte, [c. 1885].
4to, 36 plates comprising title, index, and 34 photo-lithographed portraits of Ottoman Sultans within ornate frames, text in Arabic and French; first quire loose, some discolouration and occasional small chips to fore-edges, light marks from use, blank versos browned; in original red cloth, Arabic and French title in gilt within ornate frame to front cover, gilt vignette within frame to lower cover, grey watered silk endpapers; covers damp stained, spine, joints, edges and corners worn, hinges split; notes in Arabic in ruq‘ah script to blank versos of index leaf and first 20 portraits.
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Abdaʻ ma-kan fi suwar Salitan Al ʻUthman … Album des souverains Ottomans édité par Selim Faris Effendy directeur du journal arabe Eljawaib, Constantinople.
A handsome set of portraits of thirty-four Ottoman Sultans from Osman I (founder of the Ottoman Empire) to Abdul Hamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909, this copy annotated with notes in Arabic.
Ahmad Faris (1805/6–1887; see ODNB) was a Lebanese translator and journalist who enjoyed a colourful career, translating the Bible into Arabic for the SPCK in Malta, Cambridge, Oxford and London, and becoming a British citizen in 1851. His Practical grammar of the Arabic language was published by Bernard Quaritch in 1856. After converting to Islam at Tunis, he went to Constantinople in 1859 to work as chief corrector at the Sultan’s press, and edited the Arabic newspaper Al-Jawaib for over twenty years.
The Arabic notes to this copy provide potted biographies of the first twenty Sultans i.e. Osman I, Orhan, Murad I, Bayezid I, Çelebi, Murad II (a longer note), Mehmed II, Bayezid II, Selim I, Suleiman I, Selim II, Murad III, Mehmed III, Ahmed I, Mustafa I, Osman II, Murad IV, Ibrahim, Mehmed IV, and Suleiman II. Our annotator then ran out of steam and there are no notes to the remaining portraits (Ahmed II, Mustafa II, Ahmed III, Mahmud I, Osman III, Mustafa III, Abdul Hamid I, Selim III, Mustafa IV, Mahmud II, Abdulmejid I, Abdulaziz, and Murad V).
