Correspondence manual, bound for Sultan Abdülmejid I

Münseât-i Aziz (Aziz Efendi). Fülk-i Aziz.

€ 4,500.00

A rare book in Ottoman Turkish, printed at the short-lived Egyptian press in the Ras El Tin Palace in Alexandria: a work on formal composition and correspondence, by the leading Alexandrian scholar Aziz Effendi, himself a composition writer, translator, and proofreader at the Bulaq Press. As described by its author, it contains "certain examples of paraphrases, petitions, and redactions made by your humble servant, with their fairhand copies".

The book is dated with the gematrical value of the Arabic letters in a poem on the last page. Only three books were printed at the Ras El Tin Palace press, all by the same author: Tarih-i Napolyon Bonaparta (The History of Napoleon Bonaparte), Fülk-i Aziz (The Ship of Aziz), and Tarih-i italya (The History of Italy). All were published in 1833, in June, August and October respectively. The production of a fourth book, issued in three volumes, was transferred to Bulaq in the middle of the printing of the second volume. After that, until the end of 1844, only a gazette, "Le Moniteur Égyptien", would be produced in Alexandria (see Hsu Cheng Hsiang, pp. 45-47).

A fine example of the early Turkish-language works that emerged from the literary milieu which took shape around Muhammad 'Ali. This copy is bound in a highly decorative near-contemporary binding with tughras of the reform-minded Sultan Abdulmejid I (1823-61) on both covers, identifying it as formerly in the Sultan's library. Only five institutional examples could be traced on WorldCat (BSB Munich, Mainz University, Univ. of Toronto at Downsview, Library of Congress, University of Washington Libraries).