Ellow (5 results)

Condition: Fine. Number of books: 1 book.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: fair. Cloth/dust jacket Octavo. red boards, grey cloth spine, silver lettering, dust jacket528 pp, dj edges torn.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. index, [4], 86, iv(p.). Original mustard-colored boards narrowly-backed in red cloth. 19 cm. Former owners's name (HM. Jackson) on front cover. Stamped on title-page: Chief Education Officer GHQ. P.A.I.F. No jacket (did it ever have one?). Rusted areas around rusty staples (which seem to be still intact). Tables, etc. generally rendered in three columns: (1) English; (2) Kurdish & Yazidis; and (3) Assyrian. "The Kurdish and Yizidis of this book is that spoken by all Yizidis and the Kurds between the Black Sea, Lake Urmia and Mosul, and is mostly a combination of Persian Arabic and Turkish. It is entirely different to the Kurdish spoken in other parts of Kurdistan." [Printed Note on verso to title-leaf]. A linguistic rarity. OCLC locates one copy (in Germany).

2pp., 4to. Bifolium. Two matching panels have been removed, one each from the foot of each leaf, removing the signature and some text from the first leaf. On aged paper, with closed tears along crease lines. Addressed by Le Bas on the reverse of the second leaf, with his seal in red wax and a postmark, to 'S. S. Ward Esqre. | Accountant General's office | London'. Le Bas writes to express 'the relief & gratitude which I have derived from the assurance of your satisfaction with my humble efforts to do justice to the memory of Bishop Middleton. The reputation of such a man is public property; and fearful is the responsibility of him who presumes to lay his hand upon the ark of a treasure so sacred.' He continues in the same vein, concluding with the postscript: 'P.S. You will be pleased, perhaps surprized, to hear that the Court of Directors have very kindly & liberally taken 40 Copies'. Le Bas's biography of Middleton was published in London by Rivingtons in 1831.

First edition. 12mo. Original quarter red cloth with printed yellow boards; extremities a little worn, boards dusty, otherwise good. Some spotting to edges and opening and closing leaves. [4], 87, [1]blank, iv pp. Baghdad, Government Press, An uncommon grammar, devoted to the Kurdish (Kurmanji) and modern Syriac spoken in the regions between Mosul and the Black Sea. Agha Petros Ellow was Commander-in-Chief of the Assyro-Chaldean Forces, who were allied to Britain during the First World War. In a short introduction, he states the grammar was printed ?to meet the needs of those, who through the War are interested in the ancient Christians and Tribes of Central Asia? (p.[2]). However, it was much more likely used by officials attempting to navigate the fractured and fractious post-war landscape, in which new countries were forming and ancestral homelands were being split. By 1933, the homeland of the Yezidis was ?divided by the borders of four separate states ? Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria? (Açikyildiz, Birgül, The Yezidis, p.58), as was also the case for the Kurds.  A year before the publication of Ellow?s work, the Government Press issued another Kurdish grammar, by Major E.B. Soane. Soane?s grammar focused on the dialect spoken in Sulaymaniyah, where Mahmud Barzanji first revolted against (British-backed) Iraqi authority; further exemplifying how Government Press publications were almost always spurred by political events in British Mesopotamia (later Mandatory Iraq). Rare in commerce, with no copies in auction records. .