4to. Not paginated [197 pp], 3 columns per page, with 197 portrait plates and biographic notices, contemporary half calf binding, marbled end papers, gilt decorated spine, Bookplate verso front cover, spine professionally repaired, copy in very good condition otherwise, No publisher’s name, Paris [1834].

Synopsis

A biographical dictionary certainly printed for private circulation only, it includes biographical information about the greatest personalities of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The volume starts with a portrait and biography of Abdullah ibn Saud. It is divided into about 197 cards, printed only on the recto, each of which contains the portrait and the biographical data of important historical or literary characters. Among them the biographies of Louis Bonaparte, Tsar Alexander I (Russian Emperor 18th/19th century), Jacques Danton (politician), Kleber… and especially Abdullah ibn Saud, the last head and chief of the Wahhabis, born 1740 and died 1818. He ruled the First Saudi State from 1814 to 1818. He was the last ruler of the first Saudi state and was executed by the Ottomans. The Ottomans gave the task of weakening the grip of the House of Saud to the powerful viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha. This initiated the Ottoman–Saudi War, in which Muhammad Ali sent his troops to the Hejaz region by sea. His son, Ibrahim Pasha, then led Ottoman forces into the heart of Nejd, capturing town after town. Saud’s successor, his son Abdullah bin Saud, was unable to prevent the recapture of the region. Finally, Ibrahim reached the Saudi capital at Diriyah and placed it under siege for several months until it surrendered in the winter of 1818. Ibrahim then shipped off many members of the clans of Al Saud and Muhammed Ibn Abd Al Wahhab to Egypt and the Ottoman capital, Istanbul. Abdullah bin Saud was later executed in the Ottoman capital Istanbul with his severed head later thrown into the waters of the Bosporus, marking the end of what was known as the first Saudi state. Although the Ottomans maintained several garrisons in Nejd thereafter, they were unable to prevent the rise of the Emirate of Nejd (the second Saudi state) from another branch of the House of Saud under Turki bin Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Saud. Both the Wahhabi sect and the remaining members of the Al Saud clan stayed committed to founding a second Saudi state that lasted until 1891, and later a third state, Saudi Arabia, which continues to rule until the present day.