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.
  1. AKHTARĪ, Mustafā bin Shams al-Dīn al-Qarahisārī.

    Akhtarī Kabīr.

    [Margus, Ottoman Balkans, early nineteenth century.]

    A handsome copy of the important Arabic-Turkish dictionary known as Akhtarī Kabīr.

    £3750

  2. [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

  3. [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

  4. [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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. BALBI, Girolamo. 

    Oratio habita ab eloquentissimo viro Hieronymo Balbo Praesule Gurcen[sis] Serenissimi Principis Ferdinandi Archiducis...

    [Rome, Francesco Minucio Calvo, 1523.]

    First(?) edition of Balbi’s celebrated oration in praise of newly elected pope Adrian VI, one of several editions to appear in the same year, with priority not established.

    £550

  9. 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 illustrated edition, and the first edition translated by Olearius, of Sa‘di’s Gulistān or ‘Rose-garden’, with splendid engravings. 

    £6500

  10. FERDOWSĪ.

    Shāhnāmah.

    Tehran, Amir Kabir, AH 1350 [AD 1971].

    A lavishly-produced edition of the Shāhnāmah (or Shahnameh), rare in the dustjacket, one of a thousand copies printed to mark the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire.

    £4750

  11. 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

  12. 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