Islamic
Contact Alex Day
The written legacy of the Islamic world from the eighth to the twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on Arabic and Persian manuscripts, together with Western books and manuscripts dealing with Islamic cultures and countries.
Quaritch has been handling such material since the nineteenth century, and has been instrumental in the expansion and refinement of many major collections. Among the important works to pass through our hands have been a manuscript of Nizami's Khamsah, copied for the Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1595, now MS Add. 12208 at the British Library; a set of four volumes from a thirty volume Qur'an, one of the earliest known examples of Eastern Kufic, now MS 1417 at the Chester Beatty Library; and Pagano's monumental view of Cairo, printed at Venice in 1549, one of two surviving copies, now in a private collection.-
POSTEL, Guillaume.
De orbis terrae concordia libri quatuor, multiiuga eruditione ac pietate referti, quibus nihil hoc tam perturbato...
[Basel, Johannes Oporinus, 1544.]
First edition of all four books of Postel’s vision of the unity of the world. The first book had been printed privately in Paris the previous year while approval of the Sorbonne theologians was awaited. When that was not granted, Postel had the work printed by his friend Oporinus in Basel.
£4500
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[MALTA.]
Eruditissima istoria dell’assedio fatto dalli Turchi all città di Malta.
Naples, [c. 1800?].
Scarce poem on the 1565 Great Siege of Malta, when around 2400 Knights Hospitallers and Maltese inhabitants repelled an Ottoman invasion lead by Dragut and Mustafa Pasha. Library catalogues credit the work to Innico Grivaccio.
£650
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POGÁNY, Willy (illustrator).
Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales, collected and translated by Dr Ignácz Kúnos, with Illustrations...
London, [Ballantyne Press for] George D. Harrap & co., [1913].
First edition of this attractive collection of Turkish fairy tales, gathered by the Hungarian folklorist Ignác Kúnos and beautifully illustrated by Willy Pogány.
£450
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[UNGER, Salomo Gottlob.]
Geschichte des Oesterreich-Russischen und Türkischen Krieges, in den Jahren von 1787. bis 1792. Nebst...
Leipzig, Wilhelm Gottlob Sommer, 1792.
First and only edition, extremely rare, of this account of the Austro-Turkish War of 1788-1791, and of the concurrent Russo-Turkish war of 1787-92. It includes the full texts of the Treaty of Sistova of 4 August 1791 and of a separate convention attached to it, in both French and German. While...
£1250
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[QUARITCH.]
Guillaume Postel (1510–1581).
Quaritch, 2006.
A catalogue of a collection of the works of the Renaissance scholar and Arabist, Guillaume Postel. ‘Not only does it include editions of quite exceptional rarity, to be found in few libraries on either side of the Atlantic, but it illustrates every moment of Postel’s extraordinary career and...
£60
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HANWAY, Jonas.
An historical account of the British trade over the Caspian Sea, with a journal of travels from London through Russia...
London, Dodsley, Nourse, Millar, Vaillant, & Patterson, Waugh, and Willock, 1753.
First edition of Hanway’s narrative of his trade mission to Russia, Persia, and the Caspian Sea. Having joined the Russia Company in 1743, Jonas Hanway (1712–1786) sailed for Riga in April that year, before travelling on to St Petersburg, Moscow, and Astrakhan in an attempt to re-establish...
£1400
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BLANCHON, Jacques.
Iacobi Blanchoni ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum beneventanum abbatem selestensem defensionum liber.
Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1550.
First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly-printed de Tournes edition. Ostensibly a simple series of remarks against the theses of the (presumably sternly Scholastic) abbot of Selestan, this is a tract of Renaissance moral philosophy. The theme of...
£950
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GALLOP, Annabel.
Malay seals from the Islamic world of Southeast Asia.
Singapore, NUS Press in association with the British Library, 2019.
A new publication by Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator in Southeast Asia Collections at the British Library, published by NUS Press in Singapore. The British Library website describes Malay seals as ‘a catalogue of 2,168 seals sourced from more than 70 public institutions and 60 private collections...
£85
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BALBI, Girolamo.
Oratio habita ab eloquentissimo viro Hieronymo Balbo Praesule Gurcen[sis] Serenissimi Principis Ferdinandi Archiducis...
[Rome, Francesco Minucio Calvo, 1523].
One of several editions of Balbi’s celebrated oration to appear in the same year, priority not established.
£950
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ATABEY, Sefik E. – Leonora NAVARI.
The Ottoman World. The Sefik E. Atabey Collection. Books, Manuscripts and Maps.
London: Bernard J. Shapero, 1998.
First and only edition, limited to 750 sets. A comprehensive catalogue of Sefik E. Atabey's remarkable library of some 1,370 pre-1854 books, manuscripts, and maps relating to the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. Each item is carefully described and annotated, and the catalogue is supplemented...
£600
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SA‘DI, Abu ‘Abd Allah Musharrif al-Din (Adam OLEARIUS, translator).
Persianischer Rosenthal. In welchen viel lustige...
Schleswig, Johann Holwein for Johann Nauman in Hamburg, 1654.
Rare first edition of Olearius’s translation of Sa‘di’s Gulistān or ‘Rose-garden’, richly and engagingly illustrated.
£6500
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VANE, Charles William, Marquess of Londonderry.
A Steam Voyage to Constantinople, by the Rhine and the Danube, in 1840–41,...
London, Henry Colburn, 1842.
First edition, scarce on the market, of this ‘very interesting work’ (Blackmer) by Vane (1778–1854), the half-brother of Lord Castlereagh who served under Wellington in the Peninsular War and later as ambassador at the Congress of Vienna.
£1500
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BURCKHARDT, Johann Ludwig (John Lewis).
Travels in Arabia, comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the...
London, Henry Colburn, 1829.
First edition, in one volume, recounting Johann Ludwig Burckhardt’s journey to Mecca on behalf of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa in 1814.
£3750
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SHAW, Thomas.
Travels, or observations relating to several parts of Barbary and the Levant, illustrated with cuts, the second edition,...
London, A. Millar and W. Sandby, 1757.
‘Second and most valued edition’ (ODNB) of Shaw’s observations of North Africa and the Near East. Serving as Chaplain to the English factory at Algiers from 1720 to 1733, Thomas Shaw (1694–1751) travelled extensively in Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus, and North Africa, gathering extensive observations...
£1200
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LA ROQUE, Jean de.
Voyage de Syrie et du Mont-Liban. Contenant la description de tout le pays compris sous le nom de Liban et d’Anti-Liban,...
Amsterdam, Herman Uytwerf, 1723.
Second edition (first Paris 1722) of La Roque’s account of his first journey to the Arab world, undertaken in 1689 when he visited Syria and Lebanon. The son of a Marseille coffee merchant, La Roque (1661–1745) was a journalist, traveller, and one of the founders of the Académie de Marseille....
£1500