Islamic Culture / Arabic Printing & Calligraphy

AL-ZAMAKHSHARI, Abu al Qasim Mahmoud ibn Omar (Joseph von HAMMER-PURGSTALL, ed.). Samachschari's Goldene Halsbänder. Als Neujahrsgeschenk arabisch und deutsch.
Vienna, widow of A. Strauss, 1835. 8vo. With two identical plates showing the golden necklace around a calligraphic Arabic inscription, the necklace hand-coloured in gold and the inscription in blue, as a frontispiece for both the Arabic and the German text (on the first and the last page). The Arabic title is incorporated into a printed circular medallion with decorative points at the head and foot on the first page, and the main Arabic text opens on the back of the same leaf with an elaborate headpiece. Text set in German and Arabic. Contemporary green calf (spine faded to brown), with a gold- and blind-stamped frame on each board. [1], [1 blank], 54 pp. (German text); 27, [1] ll. (Arabic text). Full description

AL-SUYUTI, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr. De proprietatibus, ac virtutibus medicis animalium, plantarum, ac gemmarum, tractatus triplex.
Paris, Sébastien et Gabriel Cramoisy, 1647. 8vo. With 2 woodcut headpieces, a woodcut tailpiece and woodcut decorate initials, plus decorations built up from arabesque typographic ornaments. Set in roman and italic type with a few words in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac. Contemporary vellum with manuscript spine label (faded). [24], 179, [17] pp. Full description

AL-ZAMAKHSHARI and Jens Peter BROCH. Al-Mufassal, opus de re grammatica Arabicum.
Oslo, W.C. Fabritius, 1859. 8vo. Near contemporary cloth with title in gold on spine, covered with protective plastic. 229, [5] pp. Full description

BELLARMINO, Roberto. [Title in Arabic] | Dichiarazione piú copiosa della dottrina cristiana... Tradotta dalla lingua italiana nellaraba, e dora di bel nuovo stampata.
Rome, [Propaganda Fide], 1770.
With: (2) BORGIA, Stefano. Irsad li-ajl al-i'tiraf wa-tanawul al-qurban, ... [= Instructions for confession and communion]
[Rome, Propaganda Fide, 1770?].
2 works in 1 volume. 8vo. The catechism with a woodcut of fruits and branches on the title-page and 2 woodcut headpieces The instructions with the title in a decorative border built up from cast fleurons, 1 woodcut headpiece and several further decorations built up from cast fleurons. Except for the bilingual title-page to the Bellarmino and the imprimatur on the last printed page of the Borgia, both works are set entirely in Arabic type. Contemporary half sheepskin, manuscript title on spine, paste paper sides, sprinkled edges. 411, [1 blank]; 109, [1 blank], [1], [3 blank] pp. Full description

BURTON, Sir Richard Francis. Falconry in the valley of the Indus.
London, Van Voorst, 1852. 8vo. With a tinted lithographed frontispiece, 3 plates and with an 8-page publishers catalogue at the end. Original publisher's cloth. [16], 107, [1]; 8 pp. Full description

CAÑES, Francisco. Gramatica Arabigo-Española, vulgar, y literal. Con un diccionario Arabigo-Español, en que se ponen las voces mas usuales para una conversacion familiar, con el texto de la doctrina Cristiana en el idioma Arabigo.
Madrid, Don Antonio Perez de Soto, 1775. 4to. With Perez de Soto's device on the title-page. Set in roman, italic and Arabic type. Contemporary mottled sheepskin. [1], [1 blank], [14], 272, [5], [2 blank], XVII pp. Full description

[AUTOGRAPHS]. DORN, Bernard. [21 autograph letters, signed, to Marie-Félicité Brosset].
Saint Petersburg, ca. 1840-1879. 8vo (letters, mostly 21 x 13.5 cm) and folio (list of publications). Letters in French with an occasional (Persian?) word in Arabic script, written in black ink on paper, some with the address on the outside and one with Dorn's (Persian?) red wax seal in Arabic script.
With: (2) [Manuscript chronological numbered list of 34 publications by Dorn, 1843-1865].
[Saint Petersburg, ca. 1865]. 20 letters [4] pp. each (some including blanks); 1 letter [1, 1 blank] pp.; list of publications [4] pp. Full description

EGE, Otto F (compiler & author of the annotations). [Drop-title:] Fifteen original oriental manuscript leaves of six centuries. [Binding title:] Fifteen original oriental manuscripts.
[Cleveland, Ohio?], [Cleveland Institute of Art or Western Reserve University?], [ca. 1952]. 15 manuscript leaves (in one case a fragment of a scroll) of various formats and sizes, some glazed (see the detailed list of contents for specific dimensions), 7 written on straight-forward laid paper (European and non-European), 6 more problematic (probably all non-European), 1 on straight-forward wove paper (no. 14, supposedly made in Russia) and one on vellum (no. 7), most rubricated and/or decorated in various colours, some decorated or highlighted in gold. Each manuscript leaf is mounted (hinged on one edge to allow access to both sides of the leaf) in a passe-partout (46.5 x 33 cm) and each has a letterpress slip (10 x 18 cm) with explanatory text tipped onto the foot of the passe-partout. The publication has no title-page but includes a letterpress folio leaf that serves as a table of contents and has the drop-title given above (the present copy contains two copies of that contents leaf). The display typeface used in the letterpress leaves (and on the portfolio) is the 1938 Libra by the Dutch designer Sjoerd de Roos, inspired by uncial manuscripts. Publishers original portfolio (48.5 x 34 x 4.5 cm) covered with black cloth with on-lays in black and red on the front and the authors name in white and title in red on the spine, with three pairs of black ties (one on the inside) and a label on the inside of the right black flap giving information about the limited edition: "Edition limited to forty numbered sets of which this is No 33". [1] leaf (plus a duplicate) plus 15 original manuscript leaves mounted in white passe-partouts. Full description

ERPENIUS, Thomas. Grammatica Arabica; cum varia praxios materia, cujus elenchum versa dabit pagella.
Leiden, Johannes Maire, 1656. 2 parts in 1 volume. 4to. Mid 19th-century half tan calf, gold- and blind-tooled spine. [12], 172, “282” [= 284] pp. Full description

[GREAT BRITAIN - ARABIC]. Civil service commission pamphlet containing the question papers of the preliminary and interpretership tests in Arabic used at an examination held in June 1936 of the officers of the Royal Air Force. Crown copyright reserved.
London, printed and published at Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1936. Folio. Printed in English and Arabic. Original publisher's printed paper wrappers, in later blue paper wrappers. 10 pp. Full description

[GREAT BRITAIN - ARABIC]. Civil service commission pamphlet containing the question papers of the preliminary and interpretership tests in Arabic used at an examination held in June 1938 of officers of the Army and Air Force. Crown copyright reserved.
London, printed and published at Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1938. Folio. Printed in English and Arabic. Original publisher's printed paper wrappers, in later blue paper wrappers. 10 pp. Full description

JUYNBOLL, Theodorus Willem Johannes. Chronicon Samaritanum, Arabice conscriptum cui titulus est liber Josuae. Ex unico codice Scaligeri nunc primum edidit, Latine vertit, annotatione instruxit, et dissertationem de codice, de chronico, et de quaestionibus, ...
Leiden, Samuel and Johannes Luchtmans, 1848. 4to. With a folding lithographed plate. Set in roman and italic types with the 55-page transcription in Arabic type and shorter passages in Hebrew, Samaritan and Syriac type. Modern half cloth, gold-tooled spine, marbled sides and decorated endpapers. XII, 369; [1], [1 blank], 55 pp. Full description

KREMER, Alfred von. Ibn Chaldun und seine Culturgeschichte der Islamischen Reiche.
Vienna, Karl Gerold's son (back of title-page: Adolf Holzhausen), 1879. 8vo. With 4 leaves with Arabic text. Contemporary paper wrappers. 62, [2 blank] pp. Full description

[AUTOGRAPH]. LANGLÈS, Louis Mathieu. [6 autograph letters, signed, mostly to Antoine-Jean de Saint-Martin].
[Paris], 7 April [1820?]-13 January 1824. 8vo & 4to. Signed autograph letters in brown ink on laid paper, the 1824 letter on a letterpress "Bibliothèque du Roi" letterhead with the royal arms. 7 letters, each written on 1 side of a single leaf. Full description

[MANUSCRIPT - IBN SINA (AVICENNA)]. [Mahmud ibn Muhammad ibn Umar AL-GAMINI and others]. [Qanunceh (= Small canon)].
[colophon: 1279 AH (= 1862 CE)]. (ca. 17.5 x 10.5 cm). Manuscript on paper, written in a cursive, Persian-Arabic script in 15 to 23 lines per page. With 1 leaf containing 8 hand coloured illustrations, with captions, of medical instruments (4 instruments on respectively the recto and verso of leaf 26). Contemporary brown calf, with blind-stamped decorations. [29] ll. Full description

MENOU, Jacques-François de Boussay de. Ordre du jour, du 29 nivôse an 9 [19 janvier 1801].
Cairo, Imprimerie nationale, [19 January 1801 CE =] 29 nivôse an IX. Small folio (21.5 x 31 cm). Printed in French and Arabic in two columns. 2 pp. Full description

MOLÉ, Joseph. Épreuves de caractères Arabes, gravés et fondus par Molé Jeune, sous la direction de M. L. Langlès.
Paris, (back of title-page: Imprimerie d'Éverat), 1823. 4to. Modern boards. 14 ll. Full description

NORBURY, Paul Fitzgerald. An abridged Arabic grammar with one hundred and fifty simple conversational scentences and a vocabulary of two thousand five hundred words.
Aden, printed at the Aden Special Prison Press, [1917]. Square 8vo. Printed in English and Arabic type. With a tipped-in paper slip on the title-page: "Since the issue of the first edition it has been possible to test this grammar in regard to its utility in Mesopotamia. The result has been to confirm the correctness of the claim made in para four of the preface". Original publisher's printed hard board covers with red cloth spine. IV, 68 pp. Full description

OLIVEIRA, Custodio José de. Diagnosis typografica dos caracteres gregos, hebraicos, e arabigos, addiccionada com algumas notas sobre a divisão orthografica da linguage latina, e outras da Europa, ...
Lisbon, Impressão Regia, 1804. 4to. 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. 72, [14], VIII pp. plus [2] ll. with engravings. Full description

[QURAN - ARABIC & LATIN]. MARRACCI, Ludovico, ed. Alcorani textus universus ex correctioribus Arabum exemplaribus summa fide, ... Eadem fide, ... in Latinum translatus; appositis unicuique capiti notis, atque refutatione: ...
[vol. 2 title:] Refutatio Alcorani, in qua ad Mahumetanicae superstitionis radicem securis apponitur; ...
Padova, Typographia Seminaria, 1698. 2 volumes bound as 1. Folio (35.5 x 25 cm). Blind-tooled vellum (ca. 1800?), reusing and retooling vellum from a slightly earlier blind-tooled binding. [5], [1 blank], 45, [2], [1 blank], 46, [2], 81, [3], 94, [10], 126, [3] [1 blank] [13], [1 blank]; [8], 17, [3], “838” [= 836], [11], [1 blank] pp. Full description

ROORDA, Taco. Grammatica Arabica, breviter in usum scholarum academicarum conscripta ... Adiuncta est brevis chrestomathia, edita et lexico explanata a P. Cool.
Leiden, Samuel and Johannes Luchtmans, 1835. 8vo. Text set in Roman and Arabic type. Contemporary quarter brown cloth, marbled paper sides, a paper label with the name of the author and the title printed in black on the spine. VIII, 298, [32] pp. Full description

SAVARY, Claude-Etienne. Morale de Mahomet; ou recueil des plus pures maximes du Coran.
Constantinople, [no publisher's name]; Paris, Lamy, 1784. 18mo in 2s. With a woodcut flower ornament on the title-page, a woodcut rococco headpiece, small decorated roman capitals used as initials, decorative rules. Brown goatskin morocco (ca. 1865?), gold-tooled spine in 6 compartments, chemical marbled sides, nonpareil marbled endpapers. [4], 91, [1 blank] pp. Full description

SCALIGER, Joseph Justus. Opus de emendatione temporum: hac postrema ed., ex auctoris ipsius ms., emend., magnáque acces. auctius. Add. veterum Graecorum fragmenta selecta.
Including: Computus Arabicus ecclesiae Antiochenae.
Geneva, Pierre de la Rovière, 1629. Folio. With title-page printed in red and black and with woodcut printer's device and several woodcut initials. Set in roman and italic types with long passages set in Greek, Arabic and Hebrew and shorter passages in Syriac. The long passages in Samaritan and Ethiopic, printed from meticulous woodblocks. Contemporary blind-tooled vellum. [1], [1 blank], [1], [1 blank], [9], [1 blank], LII, [4], 784, [46], [2 blank], 59, [1 blank] pp. Full description

SCHEIDIUS, Jacob. Glossarium Arabico-Latinum manuale maximam partem en Lexico Goliano excerptum. Editio altera.
Leiden, Samuel and Johannes Luchtmans, 1787. 4to (26 x 21 cm). Text set in two columns, with Arabic characters throughout. Contemporary half calf, marbled sides. [6], 286 pp. Full description

SCHNURRER, Christian Friedrich von. Bibliotheca Arabica.
Halle, I.C. Hendel, 1811. 8vo. Set in roman types, with occasional passages in Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac and Greek. Contemporary calf, gold-tooled spine. XXI, [3], 518, [515]-529, [1] pp. Full description

SHIRWANI, Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-. Nafhat al-Yaman fi-ma yazulu bi-dhikrihi al-shajan. [= Breezes from Yemen].
Calcutta, printed by Mawlawi Kabir Ud Din Ahmad at the Urdoo Guide Press, 1881. 8vo. Original publisher's pebble-grain lilac cloth. [2], 276, [2] pp. Full description

SIKE (SIECKE), Heinrich (editor). Evangelium infantiae. Vel liber apocryphus de infantia servatoris. Ex manuscripto edidit, ac latina versione & notis illustravit ...
Utrecht, François Halma, Willem vande Water, 1697. 8vo. With the main text in Arabic with a parallel Latin translation on the facing pages. Contemporary vellum. [22], 161, [7], 93, [1], [2 blank] pp. Full description

SIMPLICIUS of Cilicia. Commentarius in Enchiridion Epicteti, ex libris veteribus emendatus. Cum versione Hieronymi Wolfii, et Cl. Salmasii animadversionibus, et notis quibus Philosophia Stoica passim explicatur & illustratur.
Leiden, Johannes Maire, 1640. 4 parts in 1 volume. 4to. With three title-pages. Set in roman, Greek and Arabic types. Contemporary French pointillé binding in the style of "Le Gascon", richly gold-tooled in concentric panels on both covers, and in the six compartments of the spine, the second with the title. [20], 332, [12]; [1], [1 blank], 329, [23]; [34], 88, 15 pp. Full description

VERNAY, Charles. Poésies nationales et religieuses Françaises, Italiennes, Turques et Persanes, 195 pièces orientales, leur traductions, et le texte Turc et Persan de 57 pièces ...
Paris, Albert Franck (on back of half-title: printed by Firmin Didot frères), 1860[-1861]. With a lithographed portrait of the author, 5 lithographed facsimiles of the author's autograph manuscripts and 4 of the letterpress pages printed in gold. Extra-illustrated with 3 lithographed and 4 engraved Royal folio illustration plates (including 2 portraits of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I).
With:
(2) VERNAY, Charles. Poésies Turques et Persanes (cent quarante et une pièces) ...
Paris, Albert Franck (below frame: lithographed by [Mathieu] Masson), "1858-1859" [= AH 1275]. With a letterpress wrapper-title in French, printed in gold, a lithographed Turkish and Persian wrapper-title (dated "1275" and "1858") and text in Turkish and Persian, lithographed from the autograph manuscript in Arabic script, all printed in gold, and a lithographed portrait of the author (the same as in ad 1).
(3) VERNAY, Charles. Nouvelles poésies Persanes et Turques ...
Paris, Albert Frank, July 1860 (colophon: lithographed by [Mathieu] Masson, r. de Valois 48, Paris). A large 4to bifolium, with a lithographic facsimile of a 4-page autograph manuscript in Arabic script, printed on blue paper.
(4-18) VERNAY, Charles. [Miscellaneous publications in various formats, some letterpress, others lithographed facsimiles of the author's autograph manuscripts in French, Turkish and Persian, and including a 1-leaf autograph manuscript in Persian].
Paris, Firmin Didot frères and others, 1851-1858.
18 publications in 1 volume. Royal folio (49.5 x 34.5 cm) with a few items in smaller formats. Contemporary diced, richly gold-tooled calf, each board with a double frame of rolls and stamps, a crescent moon and star inside each corner of the inner frame, blind-tooled turn-ins, green silk brocade endleaves. [2], 4, [1], [1 blank], 142, 4, 143-262, 263-266[bis], 263-266[ter], 263-476, [2], [1 blank], [1]; 112; [4] pp. plus the wrappers and numerous inserted items. Full description

VESDIN (VEZDIN), Filip (PAULINUS A SANCTO BARTHOLOMAEO). Viaggio alle Indie Orientali umiliato alla Santita di N. S. Papa Pio Sesto pontefice massimo ...
Rome, Antonio Fulgoni, 1796. 4to. With 12 engraved illustration plates (6 with 2 illustrations each to make 18 in total), engraved roundel portraits of Pope Pius VI (on the title-page) and the author (above the opening of the main text) and some small woodcut illustrations of "Indian hieroglyphs". Set in roman and italic types with occasional words in Greek, Arabic, East Syriac, Devanagari and more extensive texts in Malayalam, plus a Malabar song with a double staff made with built-up round-head music notes. 19th-century maroon half sheepskin. XX, 404 pp. Full description