4to. xviii, [1 additions & Corrections], 243 pp., +16 pp of Report of the proceedings of the first general meeting of the subscribers to the Oriental Translation Fund, with the prospectus, report of the committee and regulations, translated with notes by Samuel Lee, half-title, modern quarter calf with marbled boards, preserving the original back wrappers, gilt title, new blue endpapers, EX LIBRIS Bookplate of Raoul Lehuard on half title page, light foxing to first and last 2 leaves, occasional light spotting, otherwise copy in very good condition, printed for The Oriental Translation Committee by J. L. Cox, first English edition, London, 1829.

Synopsis

First edition of the first substantial English translation of the travel account of Abu Abdullah Mohammed Ibn Battuta (1304-68/69), known in the West as the Arabian Marco Polo, with extensive footnotes. At the request of Abu Inan Faris, sovereign of Morocco, Ibn Battuta undertook to write the account of his many and distant journeys. He dictated the report in 1534 to a scholar he met in Granada, Ibn Juzayy. This is the sole source of these accounts, some passages of which probably came from other explorers.
These travel accounts remained unknown outside the Muslim world until the early 19th century, when abridged versions were acquired by Swiss and German explorers. It is this Arabic text which is translated here into English by the orientalist Samuel Lee.
Samuel Lee (1783 – 1852) learned Greek and Hebrew and before he was 25 had also made progress in Chaldeic, Syriac, Samaritan, Persian and Hindustani. In 1819 he became professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge. Lee was certainly a profound linguist. His linguistic genius was chiefly exhibited in his scholarly editions of the New Testament in Syriac, 1816; the Old Testament in the same language in 1823, and also in Malay; the Psalter and Gospels in Arabic and Coptic. In 1831 he wrote the Latin prolegomena to Bagster’s Polyglot Bible.
In 1829 ‘The Travels of Ibn Battuta’ was published, translated from the Arabic using an original manuscript that was bequeathed to the University of Cambridge Library by the traveller John Burckhardt. Lee’s fine translation maintains a style that is in keeping with ‘the spirit of the original’ and the extensive notes support his avowed principal objective of ascertaining the accuracy and fidelity of the author. Although “The Travels of Ibn Battuta” was translated in parts into German by Kosegarten and Apetz, this work is the first edition translated into English.
Bibliographic references: Cordier III, 2046; Cox I, p. 85; Howgego, to 1800, B47; Lust 273; Morrison I, 430.