Description
OTTOMAN AFRICA
LIBYA
SAHARA TRAVELOGUE
Abdülkadir CÂMÎ BAYKUT (Fizan Meb’usu / Deputy of Fezzan, 1877–1949).
طرابلس غربدن صحراى كبيره دوغرى : صحرا تشكيلاتى و اقوامى حقنده تدقيقات
[From Tripoli toward the Great Sahara: Investigations into the Organization and Peoples of the Desert].
Istanbul: Nişan-Babikyan Matbaası, 1326 Rumi / 1327 Hijri [1910]
Octavo (8vo), original illustrated front cover, 220 pp., map, [1] errata, with interleaved maps and black-and-white images, brown linen binding with embossed decoration and red label on the spine, original floral-printed endpapers (light traces of use, but overall good).
The book is the first separately published Ottoman travelogue dedicated explicitly to the Sahara and the Fezzan desert networks. Written by Abdülkadir Cami Baykut—an Ottoman military officer, future member of parliament for Fezzan, and diplomat—the book captures the socio-political, physical, and ethnographic realities of North Africa on the immediate eve of the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911.
Following his military education, Baykut was assigned to the remote garrison of Ottoman Tripoli under Governor Matlı Recep Pasha. In 1905, he commanded military operations at the vital Saharan oasis-fortress of Ghat, serving as both military commander and regional governor for two consecutive years.
The text provides rigorous, field-level observations that contrast sharply with generic European accounts of the era. Baykut includes detailed ethnographic and linguistic records documenting his local encounters with Bedouin populations and the Tuareg confederations, specifically analyzing their local social hierarchies, tribal dress, customs, and native Tuareg scripts.
This analysis runs alongside methodical chapters tracking the micro-climates, water sources, camel routes, native fauna, flora, and regional architectural defense strategies built across the Fezzan plateau. Early Ottoman-printed geographic works concerning their vanishing African territories are exceptionally rare.
WorldCat and national bibliographic databases record a narrow institutional census of only four copies globally, held at the National Library of Israel, the Orient-Institut Istanbul, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Stanford University and the Library of Congress.
References: OCLC 1232420370, 879189470; ÖZEGE 21187.