Middle East Collection of works

Middle East Collection of works Eleftériadès, Eleuthère. Les chemins de fer en Syrie et au Liban. Beirut: Imprimerie catholique, 1944. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to 'A son Excellence Monsieur Béchara El-Khoury, Président de la République Libanaise, hommage respectueux de l'auteur, Beyrouth, le 17 juin 1944, Eletfériadès' on the initial blank, 4to (23.5 x 16cm), contemporary half morocco, 7 halftone photographic plates (printed on both sides and numbered 1-14), folding table, 2 maps on one folding plate at rear, 9 graphs in text, original paper covers and spine bound in, plates spotted; Marchebeus, Jean-Baptiste. Voyage de Paris à Constantinople par bateau à vapeur. Paris: Artus Bertrand, Amiot, l'auteur, 1839. First edition, tall 8vo (25 x 15.5cm), contemporary quarter morocco, half-title, 24 engraved plates, engraved folding map, bookplate of Archives et temps modernes, their ink-stamp to title-page, spotting [Blackmer 1075]; Ruete, Emily (née Salimah bint Sa'id), Princess of Oman and Zanzibar. Mémoires d'une princesse Arabe. Traduit de l'allemand par L. Lindsay. Paris: Dujarric, 1905. First edition in French, 8vo (18.2 x 11cm), contemporary blue quarter morocco, [6] 330 pp., original wrappers bound in, spine rubbed, contents browned, half-title and title-page loose and slightly chipped; Laurier, Jean-Philippe. Observations sur les Pyramides. Cairo: Imprimerie de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1960. First edition, inscribed on the half-title 'A Monsieur Guy Abela, en souvenir de son passage à ma maison de Sakkarah, le 5-3-67 et en cordial hommage, J. P. Laurier', 4to (28 x 19.8cm), contemporary quarter morocco, 13 plates, original wrappers bound in, spine rubbed, staining to half-title; Guyard, Stanislas. Un grand maître des assassins au temps de Saladin. Extrait du Journal asiatique. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1877. 8vo (22 x 13.4cm), contemporary blue half morocco by the bindery of the Imprimerie Catholique, Beirut, text in French and Arabic, spotting; 'Arfa al-Dawlah Mirza Riza Khan Danesh (1846-1937). Perles d'Orient. Paris: Dujarric et Cie, 1905. Second edition, tall 8vo (24 x 15cm), original cloth, rebacked in morocco, endpapers renewed, 129 [3] pp., half-title, 4 halftone photographic plates, text-leaves browned; Musil, Alois. The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins. New York: American Geographical Society, 1928. First edition, large 8vo (24.5 x 16.5cm), contemporary orange full morocco gilt, photographic portrait frontispiece, photographic illustrations in the text, joints and extremities rubbed, spotting to rear board and edges, pp. 450-600 with occasional abrasions and repairs (pp. 532-3 marginally abraded, marginal repairs to pp. 557/8 and 559/60, 580/1 abraded with partial loss of text, similar abrasions and staining to pp. 588-600, pp. 589/90 repaired, etc.) Qty: (7) Note: Bechara El Khoury (1890-1964) was the first president of the newly independent Republic of Lebanon, serving from 1943 until his resignation in 1952; Library Hub traces two copies of Les chemins de fer en Syrie et au Liban in UK libraries (British Library and Oxford). Marchebeus's work is an account of 'the first organised steamer cruise in the Mediterranean ... [which] visited Sicily, Malta, the Ionian Islands, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor and the Archipelago' (Blackmer). Emily Ruete's work was first published in German in 1888; it has been described as the first published autobiography by an Arab or African woman. 'Arfah al-Dawlah, known as 'Danesh', was a Persian diplomatist of the late Qajar period. Perles d'Orient is a collection of poems and memoirs. Library Hub traces one copy only in UK libraries (Cambridge), and two of the first edition, printed at Constantinople the previous year. Provenance: Guy Abela (1929-2015), Lebanese poet and bibliophile, with his gilt stamp to foot of spines and ownership inscriptions to various preliminary leaves.