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A charming rare pamphlet with religious text in Armenian language, printed by the Mekhitarist Press in Trieste.   12°, 98 pp. with vignettes and illustrated initials, later marbled paper wrappers (mispagination without pp. numbers 43-44, but complete and corresponding to the example from the National Library of Armenia, tear in the lower inner corner of the title page repaired with…

A rare first edition of an Armenian novel by Mesrop Taghiadian, printed in Calcutta.   12°, [4 pp.] blank, [6 pp.], 177 pp., [5 pp.] blank, original green wrappers, later spine (two tiny wormholes in margins in the first part of the book, light brown ink lines on the title pageotherwise in a good condition).  

A milestone of children’s education in the Ottoman Empire – the first printed Ottoman primer and the first primer with modern educational methods for teachers.   Large 8°, 68 pp. lithographed text with blank page after the front wrapper probably counting as p. 1, original illustrated pink wrappers, yellow sheet with printed instructions and black cut outs bound after the…

A pair of books with 27 handsome colour woodcuts, showcasing various patterns of chintz, wood block printed or painted glazed calico textile panels, made by a Japanese artist Ryuko Goto and published in Kyoto in 1903. 2 volumes (complete), large 4°, reverse collation, original illustrated wrappers, originally bound with brown strings. Vol. 1: Guard, title, 14 colour woodcuts on double…

1 of only 2 known surviving examples - the original issue of the French merchant Charles Jeannest’s exciting and historically valuable account of his four years (1869-73) spent in the coastal Congo (today’s Banana, DRC and Zaire Province, Angola), where he served as a factor at several trading posts, featuring authentic and highly detailed eyewitness accounts and perceptive analysis of…

A charming unique collection of original drafts, collages, photographs and negatives for book covers and book advertisement, made in the late 1950s by a Turkish illustrator and designer Ayhan Başoğlu, today known for his comics and drawings of heroic figures.

  A set of 30 issues of an unusual Tatar magazine published in Constanța, Romania, for the Crimean Tatar minority, which moved to the territory of today’s Romania during the Russian famine of 1921 and fleeing the Soviet government's collectivization in 1928–29.  

A rare detailed wall-map of the Caucasus, printed in Tiflis and drafted by Military Topographic Department of the Caucasus Military District under the leadership of the prolific surveyor Hieronymus Stebnitsky  

  A rare pamphlet in Ottoman language on the Dönme, a group of Sabbatean crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire, centered in Thessaloniki. 8°, 32 pp., original wrappers with lettering, later spine (light staining and small tears in margins, but otherwise in a good condition).

  [al-`Urāḍa fī l-ḥikāya al-salğūqīya / The Gift from the History of the Seljuks / Das Greschenk aus der Saldschukengeschichte]   A rare first printed publication of an important 14th century historical work on the Seljuk Dynasty, written in Farsi, was a groundbreaking work of a German famous orientalist Karl Süssheim, which gained him a professorship at the University of Munich.…

A rare first Ottoman Book on Darwinism, printed in Bitola.   8°. 200 pp. with three interleaved images, [4 pp.], contemporary brown embossed covers, red label with gilt lettering in Ottoman on the spine, endpapers with art nouveau pattern (little age-toned and stained, binding slightly rubbed on corners, but otherwise in a good conditon).

Very Rare – a remarkably astute treatise on cholera accompanied by an amazing 462 case studies of named patients written at the height of the Cholera Epidemic of 1833-4 in Portugal by the respected physician Emigdio Manoel da Victorio da Costa, who selflessly tended to infected persons on the front lines; the work remained in manuscript for many years, until…