The Conquest of Syria, Persia, and Aegypt, by the Saracens. 1708

Publisher: London: Printed for R. Knaplock in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, J. Sprint in Little Britain, R. Smith in Cornhill, B. Lintott in Fleetstreet, and J. Round in Exchange-Alley, 1708

Octavo [8 x 5.25 inches]

[XXVIII], 391pp. [16]

[English]

Fair

This first edition offers one of the earliest English accounts of the rise of Islam based directly on Arabic manuscript sources. Simon Ockley traces the lives and campaigns of Abubeker, Omar, and Othman, following the early Islamic armies through Syria and Persia and into Egypt, where the work gives a detailed account of the conquest of Alexandria and the transformation of Egyptian governance after the death of Mahomet. Major battles and sieges at Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria, and Jerusalem appear alongside observations on religion, customs, and the character of the early Arab forces. Ockley’s reliance on authentic Arabick authors made this a foundational text for eighteenth-century readers and an early landmark in Western scholarship on the Islamic world, with its chapters on the fall of Egypt remaining among its most historically valuable sections.

Crudely bound in pressed paper boards with a brown cloth spine and a roughly painted black label at the base of the spine. Handwritten library locator numbers appear on the front cover. A blank piece of paper was pasted to the front board, and some of the black paint has seeped onto the pastedown. The text block was reattached to these replacement boards using binding tape along the front and rear hinges. The front board carries a sticker from the General Theological Seminary Library, Chelsea Square, New York, identifying the book as part of their rare book room. Additional library stamps from the same institution appear throughout the volume. A library slip on the rear pastedown reads that the book was not to be removed from the library.

It is in Fair condition. One preliminary leaf is missing, containing Roman numerals v and vi, and leaves numbered iv and vii are adhered together near the spine, obscuring some text. Pages 9 through 78 are fully detached from the binding. The title page and the first few leaves show brittle fore-edges with small losses, though these do not affect the printed text. Foxing and toning appear throughout. The table of contents at the rear is incomplete, lacking three pages. The binding is crude, with the text block attached to replacement boards by tape, and bears multiple institutional stamps from the General Theological Seminary Library. While the structural issues and missing preliminaries are present, the main body of the text remains intact.