Historia Saracenica, qua res gestae Muslimorum inde a Muhammede Arabe, usque ad initium Imperii Atabacaei per XLIX imperatorum successionem fidelissime explicantur. Insertis etiam passim Christianorum rebus, in Orientis ecclesiis eodem tempore potissimum gestis. Arabice olim exarata a Georgio Elmacino fil. Abuljaseri Elamidi f. Abulmacaremi f. Abultibi. Et latine reddita opera & studio Thomae Erpinii. Accedit & Roderici Ximenez, Archiepiscopi Toletani, Historia Arabum, longe accuratius quam ante e manuscripto codice expressa. by ELMACINUS, GEORGIUS

Leiden (Lugduni Batavorum), Ex Typographia Erpeniana linguarum orientalium, Prostant apud Iohannem Maire, & Elzevirios, 1625. Small 4to. (VI),372 (recte 364);75 p. Vellum 20 cm (Ref: Willems 232; Rahir 196; 1916; a very complete description in R. Breugelmans, 'Fac et Spera', 1625/3, p. 215; STCN ppn 114250871; Graesse 2,469; Ebert 6671; Brunet 2,964/65) (Details: Latin translation only. The printer's mark of Elzevier 'Non solus' on the title) (Condition: Vellum spotted, scratched, and slightly worn at the extremes. Boards a bit curved. Small piece at the foot of the spine is worn away. Endpapers dustsoiled. Old owner's inscription on the title. Faint waterstains in the lower margin of a few gatherings. Slight foxing) (Note: At the beginning of the 17th century The Netherlands were a world power. Political, cultural and commercial interests were combined. The wealth and power of this small republic were stimulated by the fall of the merchant city of Antwerp, the economic and financial centre of North-Western Europe in 1585, and by the arrival, especially in Amsterdam, of numerous Flemish refugees. Among the refugees were also many Sefardic Jews, many of them merchants. These Jews had fled from Spain after the forming of the Iberian Union of the Kingdom of Spain and Portugal in 1580, and especially after the Reconquista in 1492. The ties between Sefardic Jews in the Netherlands and Sefardic Jews in Venice and Istanbul made it possible for the young Republic to replace the Venetian seapower, and become the dominant factor in Mediterranean commerce. In 1610 the Dutch republic entered into a treaty with Morocco, and in 1612 with the Porte of Turkey. This caused interest in the world of the Islam, and the need to study Arabic on a scientific basis. In 1609 already the young Thomas Erpenius, 1584-1624, met in Paris Casaubon, who urged him to study Arabic. In Leyden he was a student of Scaliger, one of the greatest classical scholars ever, but also a formidable orientalist. In 1613 Erpenius was appointed professor of Arabic and 'andere orientaelse spraecken' in the university of Leyden. On his own expense he established a printing press with Arabic and oriental printing types. In 1615 he published the fables of the Arab poet Lokman. He also produced several grammars of oriental languages. After his premature death caused by the plague, his widow published some works, until the publisher Isaac Elzevier bought the typographical material: 'Isaac Elzevier acheta en 1625 le matériel laissé par le défunt et probablement aussi les ouvrages en cours d'impression tels que l'Historia Saracenica'. (Rahir, see also the preface to 'De fabels van Lokman, naar het Latijn van Thomas Erpenius' The Hague, 1964). § Elmacin, 1205-1273, also known as Ibn Amid, was an Arabic Christian historian. He wrote a cronicle of the Saracens, which extends from the time of Mohammed to the accession of the Mameluke Sultan Baybars in 1260. His main source is the Persian historian Al-Tabari, as the author tells us. Elmacin in his turn was the source for later Moslem and Christian historians. In 1625 Erpenius' widow published the Arab text of the cronicle. Our copy contains the Latin translation by Erpenius of the history of the Saracens that was published by the Leyden firms of Elsevier and Maire, also in 1625. It was one of the first translations ever made of an Arabic text in modern times. In the same year an edition in folio was published, which offers an Arabic text with the opposing translation into Latin. (Breugelmans, 1625/2). The last 75 pages contain the Arab history written by the archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, 1170-1247) (Provenance: On the title in ink an old and hard to decypher ownership entry: 'Alberti Stanislai B***'. § An old inscription about Elmacin on verso of front flyleaf: 'Elmacin sollte eigentl Elmekjin und ohne Artikel Mekjin geschrieben und ausgesprochen werd. Elmacin war Christ in Arabien im 13. Jahrhund.') (Collation: *4, A-2Y4, 2Z2; A-I4, K2 (leaf K2 verso blank) (The pagination in gathering Q is irregular, 8 page numbers are skipped, the pagination jumps from 127 to 136; else nothing irregular, the text and the catchword are correct)) (Photographs on request)