Small 8vo. 430 pp., [2 Contents], Arabic text within borders, extra title page in French, quarter calf red spine with marbled boards, decorated gilt spine, lightly rubbed, small pencil note on lower margin of first page, previous owner’s stamp on front fly leaf, occasional light foxing on first few leaves, otherwise copy in good condition, printed at the Dominican Convent Press, Mosul, second printing, 1876.

Synopsis

This is a rare edition of Kalilah wa Dimnah, printed at the Dominican Press in Mosul. Interest in typeface Arabic was not limited to independent scholars and merchants but also expanded to missionary presses in the Near East such as the Dominican Convent Press in Mosul, the American Press in Malta and Beirut, and also the Jesuits Press in Beirut. The Mosul Press bought its type according to Henry Harris Jessup from the American Mission in Beirut. A few titles have survived from the Dominican Press in Mosul.
Kalila and Dimna or “The Fables of Bidpai” is one of the gems of world culture, having been translated through the centuries everywhere from China to Spain; the fables are subtle and suggestive moral tales. It is one of the masterpieces of Eastern culture. Intended originally as a book of Council for Kings, literally, a ‘mirror’ for princes, these clever and philosophical animal fables carry immense significance in all sections of Arab and Persian society, to this day. From India, via Persia, the tales reached the Arab world through the pen of Ibn Al-Muqaffa’, who was a court scribe,
a wit, and a radical reformer. The publication locates Ibn Al-Muqaffa’s work in its original historical context – Iraq circa 750 AD and the dawn of the Abbasid revolution – one of the most turbulent moments in Islamic history, and an age with all too many parallels to our own. [After Louis Sheikho. Tarikh Fann at-Tiba’a … 178].