An excellent copy of this standard work

Oppenheim, Max von. Die Beduinen.

Leipzig, Harrassowitz, 1939-1968.

4to. 5 parts in 4 volumes. IX, (1) 1, (1), 387, (2) pp. XVI, 447 pp. XV, 495 pp. XIV,154, 155, (3) pp. With frontispiece to vols. 1, 2 and 4, 32 plates with photograph reproductions, several folding tables and maps in texts, and a total of 6 folding maps, some in end-pocket. Uniform green cloth.

 4,500.00

First edition of an elaborate work on Bedouin tribes in the Arabian Peninsula, written by the German orientalist and archeologist Max von Oppenheim (1860-1946) in collaboration with Erich Bräunlich and Werner Caskel. Von Oppenheim made various travels to the Middle East in the early 20th century, where he observed and analyzed the lives and cultures of various Bedouin tribes. "Fascination with a society seemingly still free of the constraints of 'civilization' and still governed by a shared traditional code of behaviour underlies the admiration for the Bedouins that Max von Oppenheim shared with many of his predecessors and contemporaries" (Gossman). He gathered his information during nearly forty years, and the first volume of his ethnographic study appeared in 1939, dealing with Bedouin tribes in Mesopotamia and Syria. In 1943 the second volume was published, which dealt with the tribes in Palestine, Hejaz, Transjordan and the Sinai Peninsula. The last two volumes were posthumously published and edited by Caskel (1896-1970), comprising the tribes in Iraq, Iran and north and middle Arabia. Most of the tables show family trees, and tribe members are shown on the plates, along with their names and the year the photo was taken. "Perhaps the most comprehensive work on the locations, genealogies, and interconnections of the Arab Bedouin" (Sweet).

In very good condition, only very slightly browned.

References

Macro 1720. Henze III, 650. L. Gossman, The passion of Max Von Oppenheim: archaeology and intrigue in the Middle East from Wilhelm II to Hitler (2013), p. 18; L. E. Sweet, The central Middle East: a handbook of anthropology and published research on the Nile Valley, the Arab Levant, southern Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Israel (1971), p. 157.