8vo. Volume I: 484 pp., 7 wood engravings / Volume II: 496 pp., 8 of 9 wood engravings, Lacking Plate IX: portrait of the author / Volume III: 504 pp., 9 wood engravings, including a frontispiece of Arabic text to each volume, numerous illustrations in text of Islamic calligraphy and design, original cloth backed boards, lightly rubbed round edges, title gilt on spine, edges of first three pages of volume II slightly chipped without loss, weak spine, scattered foxing, otherwise set in overall good condition, Imprimerie Felix Locquin & Henri Dupuy, Paris, 1833-1835.

Synopsis

A collection of tales by Muhammad Al-Mahdi al-Hafnawi (1737-1815) written in the style of the Arabian Nights translated from Arabic by Jean Joseph Marcel.
Marcel (1776-1854), was a French orientalist, a pupil of Sylvestre de Sacy, and the director of the Imperial Press, first at Alexandria and then at Cairo, during the French expedition. He later became director of the Imprimerie Imperiale in Paris. The present work was first issued in Paris in 1828 under the title Contes d’un Endormeur, ou les dix Soirees Malheureuses. In 1832-3, Felix Locquin published the first volume in 1833, while Henri Dupuy published the two other volumes in 1835 under a new title Contes du Cheikh el-Mohdy. Cf Gay 132.