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  A collection of folk tales, printed in the Tamil language by the state school for education of civil servants.   12°, [4 pp.], 176 pp., contemporary marble paper boards, brown goat spine with traces of a paper label (binding slightly rubbed, inside in a good and clean condition, old annotations in pencil and brown ink to the front blank…

  [İlm-i Teşrih-i Tavsifi / Descriptive Anatomy]   [2 pp.] illustrated title page and introduction, 282 pp., . hectograph with illustrations in text, later wrappers (slightly age-toned and stained, outer margens cut uneven with tiny loss to the text on the first three pages, page 22 marked twice, missing page numbers 46-48, but complete),

John Luffman’s grand map of Antigua, one of the cartographic monuments of the 18th century British West Indies; predicated upon the goldsmith-cartographer’s reconnaissance of the island conducted when it was still one of the world’s leading sugar-slave economies, as well as hosting a major Royal Navy base (then commanded by the future Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson); the map served as…

  The very rare first edition of a foundational work of Cypriology, published in Nicosia, it is the first anthology of primary historical sources on the island, featuring 35 accounts, ranging in date from 1196 AD to 1870, collected and translated from 12 different languages into English by Claude Delaval Cobham, who served as the District Commissioner of Larnaca Province…

The most extraordinary, extensive and data-rich manuscript on slavery we have ever encountered – being an original Cuban ‘registro’ (registry book) of ‘licensed’ slaves composed by a slave ‘registrador’s (registrar’s) office, likely either Havana or Matanzas, in 1855-56 (from December 1854 onwards, all slaves in Cuba were required to have a ‘cédula’, that acted as both a license and an…

  An handsome example of an early, seemingly unrecorded printed edition of a highly popular rhyming dictionary of Persian language, written by an Ottoman poet and diplomat Sünbülzâde Vehbî and issued in Bulaq, Egypt.   8°: 60 pp. letterpress, contemporary decorated paper boards an brown goat spine (old title written in ink on the first blank page, old annotations on…

A beautifully executed manuscript diploma for Duke of Brabant, the future Belgian king Leopold II, the honorary president of the Philharmonic Society of Wavre, Belgium.   Small Folio (35,7 x 22,6 cm), [8 pp.] blank, 2 pages with manuscript recto, blank, contemporary red hard-grained morocco with gold and blind tooling and lettering, gilt floral turn-ins, gilt edges, white moiré paper…

8°: [6 pp.], 107 pp. with black and white advertisements and interleaved advertisements, [7 pp.], original green boards with illustrated cover, green cloth spine (binding slightly age-toned, but otherwise in a good condition with only minor foxing to the first and last pages).

  A photograph of today little known Prague-based Linguistic Society, joining the prominent Austro-Hungarian researchers of Africa, as well as Indian, Arabic and Classical languages.   Gelatin silver photo, contemporary mounted on thick card, manuscript numbers recto in margin, black manuscript in black ink and pencil on the back, 12 x 16,5 cm (4.7 x 6.5 inches), (minor foxing verso,…

  Educational and moral stories in verses, accompanied with illustrations.   Large 8°: 185 pp. lithographed text with illustrations, contemporary green goat with small paper label with title in black ink on the spine, two fragments of lithographed pages from other books used as paste down endpapers (Persian black book-seller’s stamps in white margins, Russian blind book seller’s stamp in…

  An Ottoman book on astronomy, illustrated with fine black and white aquatints, was written for educational purposes and was based on the latest French popular works on astronomy, such as books by Amédée Guillemin (1826 – 1893) and Charles Briot (1817-1882).   8°. [16 pp.], 362 pp. with black and white printed and mounted illustrations in text, 17 interleaved…

A rare illustrated Persian book on geography, written by the leading Tehran-based astronomer and geographer Abdul Ghaffar Najm al-Mulk and published by Dar ul-Funun.   12°. 290 pp. lithographed text with illustrations and a map, folding map, contemporary half reddish-brown goat with black linen boards (binding hardly noticeable rubbed and stained, small old signature in black ink on the inner…