Sacroug (2 results)

12mo. (6), 406 pp. Contemporary half cloth over printed paper-covered boards. First edition. A practical textbook teaching Egyptian Arabic to foreigners, published at the height of the popularity of 19th-century oriental travel that entailed a need for such guidebooks. The present work comprises a vocabulary, a grammar, basic phrases, titles of dignity and proper names, some proverbs, as well as Egyptian weights and measures. This is essentially an English translation of Nolden's "Vocabulaire français-arabe" (1844), enriched with more than 60 pages of "Dialogues" that proved particularly useful to travellers to Egypt, as they could be simply read aloud. These dialogues are divided into 21 categories, including "landing at the custom-house", "travelling by rail", "discourse with a donkey-boy and a guide", "polite conversation" and "on researches of antiquities". Part of the dialogues are copied from Kayat's "Turguman inkilizi wa-'arabi / The Eastern Traveller's Interpreter" (1844), for instance the dialogue "with an Eastern lady", in which Sacroug replaced Kayat's references to Syria with those to Egypt. The book concludes with a number of proverbs, taken verbatim from Burckhardt's "Arabic Proverbs" (1830). - Some pencil annotations in English and Arabic to endpapers give a brief travel itinerary and boat schedules. - Small portion of cloth spine chipped; boards somewhat rubbed; printing on front cover slightly faded. Interior lightly spotted throughout. A good copy. - OCLC 32979784.

First edition. 12mo. Original cloth-backed printed violet boards; spine repaired (with some glue residue visible along joints), boards sunned and rubbed, extremities slightly worn, otherwise good. The author's seal impression to verso of title-page. Contemporary pencil ownership inscription to front pastedown, this not fully legible: 'Dr J.D. John[?] Cairo Egypt'. [iv], [2]errata, 406pp. Cairo, Printed for the Author by P. Cumbo, A rare introduction to the Arabic language by Gabriel Sacroug (d.1895), who served as interpreter at the British Consulates in Cairo, Jeddah and Istanbul. It contains a two-hundred page English to (transliterated) Arabic vocabulary, a short grammar of Egyptian Arabic and a wonderful selection of dialogues and proverbs. The latter is particularly valuable as a digest of proverbs common in nineteenth-century Egypt, with many curious and poetic examples: "The clarinet is in my sleeve and the breath in my mouth (ready for playing). Used to express 'I am completely ready for business.'" (p.400).  Given the detail and depth of the book, it is perhaps unsurprising that Sacroug plagiarised other works. It is largely a piracy of E. Nolden's 1844 Vocabulaire Français Arabe, with some of the dialogues adapted from Assaad Yakoob Kayat's 1844 work, The Eastern Traveller's Interpreter. Clearly unconcerned about his appropriations Sacroug marked each copy with his seal and even included a line warning against further intellectual theft, "All Rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved" (p.[ii]).  Rare. LibraryHub locates just a single copy in the UK, at Oxford, while OCLC adds three further holdings, at Munich, Harvard and Biblionet Drenthe, Netherlands.   .