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Synopsis

The perfumed garden of the shaykh nefzawi. translated by sir richard burton and edited with an introduction and additional notes by alan hull walton. first american edition.

Item Description

FIRST US EDITION. 8vo. 8.75 x 5.75 inches. 271 pp. Bound in cream linen, gilt, boards and spine decorated with floral blocks. US style rough cut fore edge. A very good clean copy. Brief Arabic inscription on title page. Decorated by publisher's device on title page. First US edition of the Arabic text of erotic literature, also serving as a practical guide to sexual techniques for men and women to follow, interspersed with stories. The fifteenth century work is attributed to Sheikh Nefzawi from Tunisa. This version is based on the translation from the French by Sir Richard Burton (1821-90), soldier and orientalist; it is now considered, however, that Burton added much of his own material to his version, greatly exaggerating and expanding its content. The edition, first published in London in 1963, has a long scholarly introduction by Alan Hull Walton. An attractively bound and presented work. * This copy comes from the library of Mahmud al-Ghul the distinguished Arabist and Scholar. He specialised in ancient South Arabian languages; taught Arabic at SOAS from at least 1957-59, during which time he inspired Major M. D. van Lessen to collect and record South Arabian inscriptions; Ghul later taught at the American University in Beirut and Yarmuk University in Irbid, Jordan. During the early 1970s he was the first scholar to identify a class of so-called South Arabian minuscule inscriptions on wooden sticks which were used to record daily records, and for which he proposed an initial decipherment in late 1977. In 1959 he presented three ancient South Arabian stone inscriptions to The British Museum and published numerous scholarly papers on Arabian language and archaeology. He died in December 1983.