Letteratura Turchesca. Vol. I - III [complete set]

3 volumes in-8, [18], 256 pp., 2 folding engraved plates; [2], 224, XLIV pp.; [4], 259 pp. Modern burgundy morocco-backed marbled boards with small corners, gilt-lettered spines, gilt supralibros of the Society of Writers to the Signet on all boards, marbled edges (binding slightly rubbed; manuscript ex-libris dated 1814 on preliminary leaf of vol. I; first and last quires of each volume and plates somewhat foxed; a few marginal pencil annotations). First edition of this landmark work of Enlightenment Orientalism, the most comprehensive survey of Ottoman intellectual and literary culture produced in eighteenth-century Europe. Toderini composed the work during his residence in Constantinople from October 1781 to May 1786 as a guest of the Venetian bailo at the Sublime Porte, Agostino Garzoni, whose patronage granted him access to Ottoman scholars, the mufti, academies, libraries, and printing establishments. The engraved title-pages are by I. Alessandri after P. A. Novelli. The contents range encyclopedically across Ottoman learning: Volume I surveys Turkish studies broadly, including religion (Quranic exegesis, theology, jurisprudence, political thought), Arabic grammar, logic, rhetoric, moral philosophy, mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, geometry), physics, natural history, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, nautical science, astrology, dream interpretation, poetry, and music. Volume II examines Ottoman academies from those founded by Mehmed II at Hagia Sophia through later foundations under Bayezid II, Selim I, and Suleiman the Magnificent, followed by a detailed account of the public libraries of Constantinople, including the Seraglio and the libraries of Raghib Pasha and Sultan Abdülhamid, and concludes with an epistolary dissertation on early Quranic manuscripts and Kufic coins together with a catalogue of the Seraglio library. Volume III is devoted to the history of printing in Constantinople, describing the presses of various European communities, the introduction and suppression of Turkish typography, and the earliest books printed by the first Ottoman press. An indispensable primary source for the history of Ottoman science, education, bibliography, and the transmission of knowledge between East and West, a good copy from the library of the Society of Writers to the Signet (WS Society), one of the oldest and most prestigious legal societies in Scotland, based in Edinburgh.…