Title: THE HISTORY OF THE ARABIANS, UNDER THE ...
Publisher: London: Printed for T. Payne, D. Wilson, and T. Durham
Publication Date: 1758
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. Complete in four volumes. [4] xlvii, 351; [4], 396; [4], 382; [4], 356 printed pages. 8 page genealogical table (first page slightly overtrimmed). Printed page footnotes and an index to each volume. Marbled endpapers. Contents with light scattered foxing, overall very clean. 14 x 21.5 cm. Full contemporary speckled calf, boards with gilt tooled borders and edges. Sympathetically rebacked in brown calf with seven compartments with blind tooled urn designs, & red & green morocco labels with gilt lettering, divided by raised bands with gilt rules. Spines very slightly rubbed. Boards with some extremely light wear at the edges- wholly acceptable for the age; and with patches of crazed patina in the rich quality of 262 year old hide. Covers 636 years of the chronological history of the Eastern Caliphs, from Aboubecre, to Mostazem-Billah, successors of the Prophet and the Emperors of Constantinople in the seventh century to the year 1258 A.D., when Baghdad was captured & Mostazem of Baghdad, the fifty-sixth and last Abassian caliph, was toppled from power and killed by the Tartar Khan Hulagu and his Mongol forces. Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph, appears in several of the stories in some of the oldest versions of the One Thousand and One Nights that Marigny repeats in part in this work. The primary basis of the author's account is the Arabic work of the Coptic bishop Severus, which our author knew through the Latin history of the Alexandrian patriarchs published in 1713 by Renaudot. Another work consulted by de Marigny (1690-1762) was "The History of the Saracens" (1708-18) by the English scholar Simon Ockley, which had appeared in French translation only two years before the abbé first published his own work (in French) in 1750. The translator, Nugent (1700?-72), an Irish-born Londoner wrote a popular French-English dictionary and books of travels, & translated numerous works from the French, including the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. An uncommon book: Rare Book Hub lists five copies sold since 1972. WorldCat lists 16 copies worldwide (Wellcome, UCL, Scotland, Manchester, Spain [2] & USA [10]). Lowndes II, 1473; Graesse IV, 399. (ST15107). Bookseller Inventory # 4412