Small 4to. 34 photo-lithographed portraits with captions including biographical information in Arabic and French, lithographed title and index list within decorated borders, publisher's blue cloth gilt, lightly faded and worn spine, all edges red, hinges and top spine repaired, otherwise copy in very good condition, Provenance of Dr F. Zeidler with his purple ink stamp on top margin of title page, Matba'at al-Jawaib, Istanbul and Leipzig, Garte, [1885].

Synopsis

RARE. Only edition of this lavish series of portraits of the thirty-four Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, from Othman Khan to Mourad Khan V.
Salim al-Shiyaq, an Ottoman of Lebanese descent, was the son of the leading scholar Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq who was the well known editor of the al-Jawa’ib journal, published in Istanbul under the auspices of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. Faris was the leader of the Constitutional party, an opposition group to the Ottoman regime, he followed his father’s example; fled the Ottoman empire to England and published essays to promote the role of the British in the Near East. His intention was to create an Arab movement, dependent on British involvement in the Near East, and to reconstruct an opposition faction among the high-ranking official of the Ottoman Bureaucracy. In 1894, after the ground had been prepared Selim began publishing a journal in London called Hurriyat (Liberty).