With a view of the Kaaba

Ockley, Simon. The History of the Saracens. Containing the lives of [...] the immediate successors of Mahomet. Giving an account of their most remarkable battles, sieges, &c. particularly those of Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Illustrating the religion, rites, customs, and manner of living of that warlike people. The third edition.

Cambridge, for Anne Ockley by permission of Henry Lintot, 1757.

8vo. 2 vols. (4), XXI, (29), 80, 339, (21) pp. (4), LVIII, 325, (3), (327)-356, (12) pp. With a folding engraved plate. Contemporary calf; modern spines with giltstamped labels. All edges red.

 950.00

Third edition of this classic and influential work, first published in 1708. Ockley (1678-1720) was Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge. "The importance of Ockley's work in relation to the progress of oriental studies cannot be overestimated [...] Ockley for the first time made the history of the early Saracen conquests attractive to the general reader, and stimulated the student to further research. [The 'History'] became a secondary classic, and formed for generations the main source of the average notions of early Mohammedan history" (DNB XLI, 364). The plate shows the Kaaba at Mecca, engraved after a drawing preserved in a manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The manuscript, which formed the basis of Ockley's work, is now known as the ‘Futûh esh-Sham by pseudo-Waqidi.

Browned and brownstained throughout. From the library of the British philosopher of religion, David Arthur Pailin (b. 1936), with his bookplate; also with engr. bookplate of Robert Fellowes (of Shotesham/Shottesham, Norfolk, d. 1869?).

References

BM 174, p. 334. Gay 98. Graesse V, 7. OCLC 6595742. Cf. NYPL Arabia coll. 33 (1st and later editions).

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