André Du Ryer was an important and influential seventeenth-century orientalist and diplomat. After reconstructing his diplomatic career, the authors assess Du Ryer's contribution to Turkish and Persian studies, his influential translation of the Quran, and his manuscript collection. He emerges as an important and influential figure whose significance has never previously been appreciated.

Andre Du Ryer and Oriental Studies in Seventeenth-Century France (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

Hamilton, Alastair

Richard, Francis

Biographies & Memoirs

The Arcadian Library

In 1549 a Venetian printmaker, Matteo Pagano, published a large engraving of an aerial view of the city of Cairo; it was accompanied by a Latin text ("Descriptio Alchiriae") written by the orientalist scholar, Guillaume Postel. The depiction of the city is sufficiently accurate to permit a detailed interpretation of the city to be made, and it remained the standard western representation of this fabled eastern city for the next 250 years. Nicholas Warner provides a context for Pagano's view of Cairo, a translation of Postel's text, and a commentary on the contents of the engraving itself in addition to the accompanying narrative. An index of subsequent revisions, and a superbly produced enhanced facsimile of the engraving itself is included. Volume 1 (208 pages) includes 36 large color plates, 5 black-and-white plates, and a modern facsimile of the original Latin text "Descriptio Alchiriae"; Volume 2 (208 pages) includes 68 black-and-white images, all details of the map. Volume 3--the map--is a "modern facsimile" of the original Map, i.e. with blemishes, etc. removed, packed in a slip case. It is the same size as the original, and folds out in a similar manner to an ordnance survey map. It is printed in two colors to match the original.

The True Description of Cairo: A Sixteenth-Century Venetian View (Studies in the Arcadian Library) 3 Volume Set

Arts & Photography

Warner, Nicholas

History & Criticism

The Arcadian Library in London holds one of the finest collections of writing by Western women travelling to the East. The books and manuscripts cover almost four centuries of travel and range from Mary Wortley Montagu's incomparable earlyeighteenth-century 'Turkish' letters to the publications of twentieth-century archaeologists, journalists, diplomatic wives and flamboyant adventurers. The best-known - for example Harriet Martineau, Lady Florentia Sale, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Edwards, Gertrude Bell and Lady Anne Blunt - are represented, alongside lesser-known European travellers such as the early Victorian writer Julia Pardoe and the Belgian-born Italian nationalist, Carla Serena.The feminist Mary Astell, on reading Mary Wortley Montagu's manuscript, commented that women could 'travel to better purpose' than men and could provide more accurate accounts of their cultural encounters. This book examines the question of whether or not women's writings reflect a special 'female gaze' and discusses the style and content of women's writing about the East and the ways in which writers negotiated and adapted their narratives to conform to their readers' expectations while often, at the same time, challenging contemporary gender roles.The subject matter is wide-ranging and eclectic. The writers' interests and opinions reflect their own cultural backgrounds but extend from conformist and unsympathetic to adventurous, subversive and open-minded. Often they were more able than male travellers to observe and appreciate cultural difference and they recorded their impressions with enthusiasm and genuine understanding. Many women travellers were also talented artists and their sketches, watercolours and photographs, reproduced extensively in this richly illustrated book, illuminate much of their writing.

Travelling to Better Purpose: Western Women Writing about the East, 1716-1916 (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

History

Tuson, Penelope

Europe

The Arcadian Library manuscript, which is the subject of this book, provides a snapshot of the intercultural dialogue that was taking place in medieval Spain where Muslims, Jews, and Christians were all involved in studying and disseminating medical knowledge. The manuscript itself is of the master work of the early twelfth-century Jewish physician, Ibn Baklarish and was written in A.D. 1130. It provides unique information about the state of medicine in medieval Spain at the time. This edited volume is completed by a collection of eight essays by an international team of experts on Ibn Baklarish and his work.

Ibn Baklarish's Book of Simples: Medical Remedies between Three Faiths in Twelth-Century Spain (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

Ivo Klaver discusses the four major expeditions (Danish, French, Prussian, and British) which assembled scientific data in various parts of the Arab world between 1761 and 1881. These unique expeditions were sponsored by governments and official institutions, as opposed to expeditions undertaken by individual collectors. As such they were aimed at satisfying a desire for national prestige in a European imperialistic context, either in the field of knowledge or in the field of trade. At the same time they were epic adventures for the brilliant and dedicated naturalists involved, several of whom paid with their lives for their single-minded determination to make new discoveries and record them. To date little work has been done on the botanical and zoological results of the Danish and French expeditions, and no study has yet dealt with the German and English ones. The expeditions are reconstructed through private letters and diaries of the naturalists which are brought together for the first time in a single book, and which throw fascinating new light on the personalities involved and the extreme hardships they endured. As such it is a major contribution to the study of travel in the Middle East in this period, as well as to the scientific treatment of the area.

Scientific Expeditions to the Arab World (1761-1881) (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

Klaver, Ivo

World

Even though Oman had always been familiar to travellers sailing between Europe and India or Persia, it was its coast alone that was known. Greeks and Romans had charted it, medieval merchants traded on it, and in the early sixteenth century the Portuguese conquered its main towns, yet the interior of Oman was all but entirely unknown and would remain so until the early nineteenth century. Only after the ejection of the Portuguese in 1650 and an independent Oman had built an empire of its own, stretching round the Indian Ocean from India to Zanzibar, did Muscat, the capital, start to be visited by western powers eager to obtain commercial concessions and political influence. In the nineteenth century, for the first time, a very few, mainly English, explorers ventured inland and embarked on the true discovery of Oman. But even that was sporadic. As long as there was a powerful ruler, the travellers were protected, but by the late nineteenth century the rulers in Muscat had lost control over the interior and it was not until well into the twentieth century that explorers such as Wilfred Thesiger could investigate the south and that the oil companies could begin to chart the centre and the west. Oman was the last Arab country to be fully explored by western travellers and this book examines and discusses the ways in which the emergent knowledge of Oman was propagated in the West, from the earliest times to 1970, by explorers, missionaries, diplomats, artists, geologists and naturalists, and by those scholars who gradually uncovered the manuscripts and antiquities that allowed them to piece together the history of the area.

An Arabian Utopia: The Western Discovery of Oman (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

Middle East

The Natural History of Aleppo, published first as a single volume in 1756 and as a two-volume edition in 1794, by Scottish physicians to the British Levant Company in Aleppo, Alexander and Patrick Russell, was a landmark in European knowledge of the Arab world. It was the first detailed study by a European of an Arab city, with a description of the topography, the inhabitants and the plant, and animal life in the neighbourhood. Maurits van den Boogert assesses the Russells' botanical and zoological discoveries and analyses the Natural History in the context of medical practices of the time both in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. He reconstructs their stay in Aleppo, their life in Britain, Patrick Russell's experiences in India, and their broader connections, as respected members of the Royal Society, with the world of learning at large.

Aleppo Observed: Ottoman Syria Through the Eyes of Two Scottish Doctors, Alexander and Patrick Russell (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

Van Den Boogert, Maurits

In this richly-illustrated book, illustrations of various Western editions of The Arabian Nights from the eighteenth to the twentieth century are presented and analysed. Visions of the Jinn is simultaneously a closely-focused study of a special case in the history of book illustration, an account of the evolution of an important strand of visual fantasy and a presentation of a hitherto neglected area of Orientalism. Some of the artists - Dulac, Dore, Brangwyn - are famous. Many others, such as Coster or Letchford, are almost totally unknown. In the course of the book, the discussion also reveals much about the visual discovery of the Near East in modern times. This volume will make an important contribution both to the history of book illustration and, more generally, to the history of the book.

Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

Irwin,Robert

The Arcadian Library, based in London, is one of the finest collections of books reflecting European interest in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Among its c.10,000 volumes are many copies with important provenances and fine bindings. In this companion volume to no. 8 in the series, six distinguished authorities on the history of book-collecting and the ownership and use of books, and the history of bookbinding, deal with significant aspects of the Library's holdings from these varied perspectives. The two opening essays, by Alastair Hamilton and Giles Mandelbrote, survey, respectively, notable European and British provenances, including royal, princely, aristocratic and learned owners, celebrated later collectors, and some remarkable annotated copies and copies associated with their authors. P.J.M. Marks describes and analyses a wide range of European decorative bindings, with particular emphasis on early German bindings, French work from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and the production of nineteenth-century England. Anthony Hobson examines three magnificent sixteenth-century bindings à la fanfare, identifying them as the work of an exceptionally talented binder in the milieu of Gommar Estienne in Paris. John-Paul Ghobrial studies the products of the famous Melkite monastery at Shuwayr in Lebanon, and reveals the mix of European and indigenous influences that moulded the style of the local binders. Finally, Nicholas Pickwoad examines a range of commercial binding structures and materials, deploying close physical inspection and forging a precise terminology to reveal careful craftsmanship and technical innovation. The scholarly essays in this volume are complemented by a very large number of specially commissioned photographs, making available a wealth of comparative evidence and new examples of particular bindings, details of decoration, inscriptions and marks of ownership.

The Arcadian Library: Bindings and Provenance (Studies in the Arcadian Library)

Giles Mandelbrote

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