8vo. Volume I: xxxix, 563 pp., frontispiece, 14 photographic plates, 1 folding map / Volume II: xx, 616 pp., frontispiece, 15 b/w plates, 1 folding map, cloth, biblio, index, light foxing to endpapers, light dust mark to lower corner of outer edges, otherwise set clean and in very good condition, Macmillan & Co, London, third edition with supplementary essays, 1951.

Synopsis

The superb and scarce (as scarce as the 1915 first edition), Sykes history, which includes a good deal of modern Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan. All maps in fine condition, all plates and maps present as called for. This book is intended to provide an updated history of Persia since the previous comprehensive history written by Malcolm. It is a history of Persia from the earliest times to the granting of the Constitution in 1906 and probably constitutes one of the best histories of the country available in any language other than Persian. Ghani. p.363.
After twenty one years residence in Persia, the author tried to fill the gaps in the European knowledge of Persian history “for Persia has exercised considerable influence, extending over many Centuries, on India and Central Asia, on Greece, on the Roman Empire, and consequently on Europe. …”
“My primary aim has been to furnish fellow-officials serving in Persia and adjoining countries, and student whether European or Persian, with a work which is, as far as possible, self-contained and complete, with this object I have focused what is known of the ancient Empires in their relations with Elam, Media, and Persia…” (Preface).