RAIF EFFENDI. Gulf of St. Malo with Jersey... - Lot 188 - Nouvelle Etude

RAIF EFFENDI. Gulf of St. Malo with Jersey and Guernsey. Űskűdar 1803. Nice old col. Faint wetness at right. 518 x 588 mm. Very rare Ottoman printed map of the Gulf of St. Malo with Jersey and Guernsey. On the left side several coastal profiles. From the atlas "Cedid Atlas Tercümesi" or "New Atlas", printed in 1218 H. or 1803 in Üsküdar, a part of Istanbul. Title, scale and place names in Ottoman Turkish. The atlas accompanied a treatise on geography entitled "Icaletü-Cografya". The author was attached to the Ottoman Embassy in London. The book was written in French by Mahmut Raif Efendi and translated into Ottoman Turkish by Yakovaki Effendi. The atlas is an Ottoman translation of William Faden's atlas. The project was supposed to be a prestige project for the Ottoman palace and it had the seal of approval of the then Sultan Selim III. The plates were engraved in Vienna, the maps were printed at the printing house of the engineering school, which operated between 1776 and 1826. The atlas is dated 1803 and only 50 copies were printed. We estimate that there are no more than 20 complete atlases and about 5 incomplete or loose sheets. - Yazmadan Basmaya: Müteferraki, p.112-118.