Description

Nüremberg: Johann Hoffmann, 1681. 340 by 230mm (13½ by 9 inches). Folio; [8], 556, [12] pp. Index. Double column text. Old calf with red & black spine labels, over boards. In German. On a preliminary blank leaf a short inscription in German from a student to his professor dated October 1876. Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece, 3 exquisite folding maps and 19 (of 21) engraved plates, many of which are two-page folding plates, and 8 large engraved in-text illustrations. Good. Extremities of boards rubbed, top & bottom of spine chipped. Engraved frontispiece repaired at inner margin. Some old text soiling at bottom inner margin. Some plates with minor repairs. Olfert Dapper (1636-1688) was a Dutch physician and scholar who wrote a series of geographical and historical books on Africa and Asia. Dapper himself never left the Netherlands, but based his accounts primarily on reports of Jesuit missionaries. His works are best known for the find and accurate engravings. In Paris, the Musee Dapper dedicated to the work of Dapper opened in 1986. This book is the First German edition of Dapper’s description of the Middle East, including Mesopotamia or Algizira, Assyria, and Anatolia; the second part is entirely devoted to Arabia. Dapper’s work is of especial importance for its original and new information on Islam, Arab science, astronomy, philosophy, and historiography, as well as for its illustrations. Includes accounts of Mecca with an extensive description of the Hajj (the pilgrimage), Jeddah, Medina, Sana’a, etcetera. The engravings show costumes, religious rites, specimens of local flora and city views. One double page plate depicts the tower of Babylon. This copy has all three folding maps in lovely condition (Bassora, Natolia [Asia Minor], and Arabiae), but was apparently never bound with two of the 21 plates. We compared our copy against the digitized copy at Regensburg (VD17 23:300237X), and it is the single page plates after page 63 and after page 132 that were omitted. The omitted plates are unremarkable single page images, paling in comparison to the two page tower of Babylon or the three lovely maps. The page numbers 266 & 267 repeat themselves, which also occurs in the Regensburg copy and appears to be a printer’s error in all copies.. A remarkable collection of early engravings and maps with an emphasis on the Arabian Gulf and Turkey.

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