4to. [2], xvi, 32 pp., printed on blue paper, untrimmed in contemporary marbled paper boards, title written in black ink on front cover, spine slightly worn, dedication verso front cover to “C. J. Tornberg, amico sue”, from the author”, owner’s signature and bookplate of Esaias Tegner the younger, dated 1878 verso front cover, a very good provenance, Regiae Academiae Typographi, Uppsala, 1827.

Synopsis

Extremely rare work. One of the earliest catalogues printed in Europe covering the first minted Islamic coins from the beginning of the Umayyad dynasty under the Caliphates Al-Walid, Hisham, to the Abbasid dynasty.
The volume is a catalogue of the Kufic, that is the Arabic coins displayed at the ‘Coins and Medals Cabinet’ at Uppsala University, published by Johan Henrik Schröder (1791–1857), who, in 1820, became the director of the collection. The catalogue was published with a dedication to J. Hallenberg and C.M. Frähn. Carl Johan Tornberg (1807-77) was an Orientalist and Arabist and a prominent authority on oriental numismatics and later professor in Oriental Languages at Lund University, Sweden. In 1848 he published a similar catalogue of the collections of Arabic coins in the Coin Cabinet in Stockholm, “Numi Cufici regii numophylacii Holminesis”.