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The Arab and Islamic World Peter Harrington london We are exhibiting at these fairs: 26 April – 2 May 2017 abu dhabi Abu Dhabi International Book Fair Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, Abu Dhabi, UAE http://adbookfair.com 1–3 June london olympia London International Antiquarian Book Fair Hammersmith Road, London www.olympiabookfair.com 29 June – 5 July masterpiece london The Royal Hospital Chelsea, London www.masterpiecefair.com 7–9 July melbourne Melbourne Rare Book Fair Wilson Hall, The University of Melbourne www.rarebookfair.com Cover illustration from Thomas Holbein Hendley’s Ulwar and its Art Treasures, VAT no. gb 701 5578 50 item 143; illustration above from Dixon Denham & Hugh Clapperton’s Narrative of Travels and Discoveries..., item 91. Peter Harrington Limited. Registered office: WSM Services Limited, Connect House, 133–137 Alexandra Road, Wimbledon, London SW19 7JY. Design: Nigel Bents; Photography Ruth Segarra. Registered in England and Wales No: 3609982 Peter Harrington london catalogue 133 The Arab andThe Islamic Arab andWorld Islamic World All items from this catalogue are available to view at Dover Street mayfair chelsea Peter Harrington Peter Harrington 43 Dover Street 100 Fulham Road London w1s 4ff London sw3 6hs uk 020 3763 3220 uk 020 7591 0220 eu 00 44 20 3763 3220 eu 00 44 20 7591 0220 usa 011 44 20 3763 3220 usa 011 44 20 7591 0220 Dover St opening hours: 10am–7pm Monday–Friday; 10am–6pm Saturday www.peterharrington.co.uk 1 1 (ABU’L-FIDA’.) SCHIER, Karl. Géographie d’Ismaël Abou’l Fédâ en arabe. Publiée d’après deux manuscrits de Musée britannique de Londres et de la Bibliothèque royale de Dresde. Dresden: I. H. G. Rau & Fils, Institut lithographique, 1846 Folio (356 × 250 mm). Contemporary purple pebble-grained cloth over flexible boards, title gilt to spine, original wrappers bound in front and back. Lithographed throughout including decorative chromolithograph- ic Arabic title page and divisional titles printed in red. From the library of British colonial agent and Arabist Colonel Samuel Barrett Miles (1838– 1914), with a printed bookplate to front pastedown noting his widow’s bequest of his collection to Bath Public Library in 1920, associated man- uscript shelf-marks to spine and front pastedown, and blind-stamps to the text as usual. Spine slightly sunned, tips bumped, a few pale mark- ings to covers, original wrappers and title slightly marked, variable light browning to contents, a few trivial spots. A very good copy. first and only edition thus, an attractive lithographed edi- tion of the Kitab Taqwim al-buldan (Survey of the Lands), an import- ant Arabic compendium of geographical knowledge completed in 1321 and containing important first-hand information on Syria and Palestine. It was widely used by European orientalists throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The Arabic title page is dated 1846 and the French title is undated; isolated references to 1 2 1 2 editions 1840 or 1841 appear erroneous. The author Abu’l-Fida’ sive Agreement. One of 500 copies printed, a printed issue-slip (1273–1331) was an Ayyubid prince who governed Hama, Syria, tipped to the title page of volume I appearing to indicate that a as a client of Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. His other maximum of 250 copies were actually issued in the first instance, major work was his Mukhtasar ta’rikh al-bashar (Compendium on the with just six copies now traced in libraries worldwide. History of Man), a work of similar character. Schier was a Dres- The first agreement is the General Treaty with the Friendly Ar- den-based private scholar who was noted by Arabists for his abs, signed at Ra’s al-Khaymah in 1820 (p. 144). Arab signatories ability to write in an attractive Arabic script, and supported him- include “Sheik Shakbool”, that is Tahnun b. Shakhbut, shaykh self and his publication by teaching German to wealthy English of the Bani Yas and ruler of Abu Dhabi from 1818 to 1833, “Sul- businessmen. Rare: no copies listed in auction records, three tan bin Sugger”, or Sultan bin Saqr al-Qasimi, ruler of Sharjah, copies in UK libraries (British Library and two in Cambridge), and the “Sheik of Dubey”, who in later agreements is named twelve traced world-wide. explicitly as Maktum b. Bati, who announced the independence of Dubai from Abu Dhabi in 1833 and founded the Maktum dy- Encyclopaedia of Arabic Literature Vol. 1 p. 32. nasty. The treaty binds the Arab shaykhdoms to aid the British £3,500 [117578] against piracy in the Gulf, illustrating that the British, despite their naval supremacy, found their interests genuinely threat- The emergence of the modern Gulf states ened by the activities of Arab sailors in the region. A further set of agreements, signed in 1838, with the chief of Abu Dhabi now 2 known as “Khaleefa ben Shakbool”, gives the British the right to (ADMIRALTY.) Instructions for the Guidance of Her detain and search any ships entering their ports which are sus- Majesty’s Ships of War Employed in the Suppression of pected of carrying slaves. The final set of treaties, agreed with the Slave Trade. London: for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office by the various Gulf shaykhs over the course of 1847, including the chief of Bahrain, Muhammad b. Khalifah b. Subman, gives li- Harrison and Sons, 1892 cence to British cruisers to seize any ships suspected of involve- 2 volumes, octavo (236 × 150 mm). Contemporary black half calf, dark ment in the slave trade. Rare, and a highly important document blue cloth sides (vol. I morocco-grain and vol. II watered), spines gilt of the formation of the modern Gulf States. in compartments, raised bands, buff endpapers, edges speckled red. Occasional blind-stamps of the Barbados Corporation. Slightly rubbed £7,500 [104970] overall, extremities bumped, vol. II sunned along head of front board, spotting to endleaves of vol. I, a few pages finger-marked in the margins not affecting text. A very good copy. first edition of this rare handbook for British sailors, re- printing in full the texts of each treaty signed between the Gulf shaykhdoms and the British from 1820 to 1847. These Instructions were published in light of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference of 1889–90; the year of publication was also that of the Exclu- 2 All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk 3 3 3 The first appearance in print of the earliest reference in history to the Arabic language 3 (AGATHARCHIDES.) [Title in Greek letters.] Ex Ctesia, Agatharchide, Memnone exerptae historiae, Appiani Iberica. Item de gestis Annibalis. Omnia nunc primum edita. Cum Henrici Stephani castigationibus. Geneva: Henri Estienne, 1557 Octavo (161 × 94 mm). Attractive late 18th-century green goatskin, title gilt to spine, rolled bands, dog and willow tool to compartments, single 3 fillet panel to boards, rope-twist gilt edge-roll, all edges gilt, floral roll gilt to the turn-ins, marbled endpapers, pale yellow silk page-marker intact. Greek types. Ineffectually obliterated ownership inscription of that Photius had a text very close to Agatharchides’ original be- the 17th-century lexicographer Robert Sherwood to the title page. A lit- fore him” (Retso, p. 300). tle rubbed, five small surface wormholes to the front board, small paper “On the Erythrean Sea”, an account of an expedition to the label at the head of the spine, light browning, some pale dampstaining west coast of Arabia ordered by Ptolemy II in 280 bc in reaction towards the lower margin, but overall a very good copy. to Seleucid expansion in the region, has been identified as “the editio princeps of these five Greek histories, including most important source for an almost forgotten chapter in the Photius’s version of “On the Erythrean [Red] Sea” by Agathar- history of discovery, the exploration of the Red Sea . by the chides, containing the earliest reference in history to the Arabic agents of the Ptolemaic government in Egypt . It also contains language. “Agatharchides’ original text is lost, but extracts and the earliest extensive account of the geography and ethnography digests of it are found in three later authors: Diodorus Siculus, of the coats of northeast Africa and Western Arabia” (Burstein). Strabo and the collection of extracts made by the Byzantine Several peoples are identified as arabes, including the Nabataoi theologian Photius in the ninth century ad . Of these three (Nabateans), Thamoudenoi (Thamud) and Gasandoi (Ghassan- witnesses . the Photius text is considered closest to the orig- ids). This edition of Agatharchides precedes its appearance in inal” (Retso, The Arabs in Antiquity, p. 295): Diodorus extensively Hoeschel’s editio princeps of Photius’s Bibliotheca, itself based on altered the text to fit his “distinctive literary style”, whereas Stra- a manuscript owned by Estienne, by nearly half a century. An bo’s immediate source was not Agatharchides at all but the lost attractive copy of a highly significant early source for the region, geography by Artemidorus of Ephesus (Burstein, Agatharchides of which also includes the first separate work on India by Ctesias Cnidus, p. 38). Photius’s version is unique in referring to an aro- of Cnidos, and two books by Appian which were not included in matic plant “which in Arabic (arabistii) is called larimna”, a pas- Estienne’s 1551 edition. sage found at p. 71 of the present text: if part of Agatharchides’s original account, this would be “the earliest reference in history Adams C3020. to a language named after the Arabs” and Retso has “no doubt £2,500 [92349] 4 Peter Harrington 133 5 among the first Muslim accounts of the Prophet to be published first in English (that is, excepting editions of classical Arabic texts, see Dimmock, Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Ear- ly Modern English Culture, p.