Bulaq Marifetname: the first treatment of post-Copernican astronomy by a Muslim scholar

Ibrâhim Haqqi, Erzurumlu. Marifetname.

€ 12.000,00

Second printed edition of the famous scientific encyclopedia, published more than half a century after the death of its author, the Turkish Sufi philosopher Ibrahim Hakki Erzurumi (1703-80). The "Marifetname", or "Book of Gnosis", completed in 1756, is a compilation of astronomical, astrological, mathematical, anatomical, psychological, philosophical as well as mystical religious texts. It is famous for containing the first treatment of post-Copernican astronomy by a Muslim scholar. "Sorte d'Encyclopedie, traitant successivement des croyances musulmanes, de la cosmologie, de l'anatomie etc." (Zenker). Among the astronomical and geographical illustrations, each carefully hand-colored, are a world map in two hemispheres, a map of the poles, the lunar phases and diagrams showing the solar system and earth's orbit.

The printing office in Bulaq, near Cairo, was set up at the command of the Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849). Almost all its productions were printed in Ottoman Turkish with Arabic types and are today considered very rare.