Here's the 2024 short-title catalogue, should you wish to refresh your memory. A few items even remain available, so do have a read, if you have enjoyed the books above.
www.ngmcburney.com/s/CURRENT-Ur...
I last issued a short-title catalogue along these lines in 2024 and am pleased to begin 2026 by announcing another short-title catalogue along the same lines.
A selection of lithographed books, from the Urdu diwan of Shahjahan Begum, Nawab Begum of Bhopal, to a Lahori bazaar edition of Hafiz, by way of Unani medicine and Urdu belles-lettres.
www.ngmcburney.com/s/Urdu-Persi...
This is one of her earliest publications as ruler, issued in tandem with her late father's slight diwan from the same press.
... no surprises there, not least because the Nawab Begum was rather a force during her reign from 1868 to 1901, after a long period of regency and then usurpation by her regent, her own mother.
... "Shirin" the poetic penname of the then Nawab Begum of Bhopal, Shahjahan Begum, as the circular register with minuscule nasta'liq helpfully notes. The only copy I've traced in a library is in the India Office collections of the British Library...
Diwan-i Shirin - a title roundel three ways, and what a difference a little ink infill makes to proceedings - one a title-page and two used as wrappers and no prizes for guessing which is which...
Filing away as yet another example of how much handling a sufficient volume of almost any object will teach you something (and that the process never really stops) - on to that next decade, I suppose!
... (not least because I've not seen any contemporary Italian books with decorated papers of this charming modernist potato print quality.)
The first time I handled this book (a different decade in my life), I rather optimistically suggested this paper was Italian, but in the intervening years I've seen enough early Bulaq imprints with very similar papers to think there was a local production of decorated papers...
Someone in Cairo in the 1830s seems likely to have been knocking out decorated papers like this - on this copy of an 1831 military manual, sheets used for the pastedowns, on a copy in Munich of the same work, wrappers.
One suspects the port's counterpart may no longer exist, given the tribulations inflicted on Smyrna after this.
You can see the stamps and inscription of the Italian port officer at Rhodes on the right - the island in 1920 an Italian colonial possession, while Smyrna in turn was under Greek occupation, though the Ottoman state apparatus and documentation continued in use, quite literally documented here.
[You can see where the counterpart for the sanitary administration at Smyrna was torn free along a perforated edge at the left.] It's worth noting this is an enormous document - here it's resting on a folio-sized portfolio.
This is one half of a bilingual (French/Ottoman Turkish) bill of health (sans plague, &c) given to the Santa Marina, a small sailing ship carrying ballast and meat, with a Greek captain, crew of six under an Italian flag, issued on 17 June 1920, when she called at Smyrna en route to Rhodes.
Smyrna to Rhodes to... London? One of those book trade moments earlier this week, when a friend was sorting the kind of miscellaneous box (otherwise mostly of maps) which any bookseller given time and space seems capable of generating. Now filed at home for a quiet day. [Ha!]
Our paper, refined by the process of preparing it for Copenhagen and presenting it to a knowledgeable and generous audience, will appear in a more structured form in the conference proceedings. Stay tuned.
Illustrated here: one further example of hand-talking on my part, the live cherry blossom installed in the theatre for the day, and a farewell view of the Black Diamond.
Flattered, delighted (and now, relieved) to have presented on kabikaj inscriptions with Abigail Bainbridge at Care & Conservation of Manuscripts 20, in the Queen's Hall at the Royal Danish Library for its final day (and final session).
Ties neatly in with the first separate appearance in book-form of this tale in Singapore print that same year...
Not the kind of thing you see every day (in fact, the only one I've ever seen in the trade, and only one remotely comparable institutional example traced so far, though this is exactly the kind of thing which survived by being folded up and forgotten.)
An English / Malay broadside for a very early (1888) bangsawan performance in Singapore - a local(ish) effort as opposed to a touring company from Bombay.
Bodleian Library MS. Laud Or. 139, folio 1a. An Arabic manuscript. Title page with kabikaj and ownership inscriptions.
ูุจููุฌ !
Ya Kabikaj!
A project- click the link to learn more:
eepurl.com/i7zXwQ
For a whirlwind visual tour with brief notes only, try:
www.ngmcburney.com/s/List-X-NGM...
To read in my usual text-only format:
www.ngmcburney.com/s/List-X-NGM...
Qajar cyanotype after an album of calligraphy prepared by 'Imad al-Kuttab
My List X, short as ever, with four items only:
18th-century folk tales of Nasreddin, Hoca or Molla
Abu Nuwas: wine-soaked Abbasid homoerotic verse
illustrated Urdu satire by Insha' in manuscript
& a cyanotype Qajar calligraphy album
In my latest list - if for some reason you're not already receiving these, and would like to do so, feel free to email nick@ngmcburney.com!
The contents: short folk tales of Hoca Nasreddin in Turkish, all on Italian export paper, marked with crescent moons as per, whose marks correspond to papers used in Ottoman documents in the last quarter of the 18th century. Which is to say: pre printed editions!
(I wonder if, like some of the pastedowns on early Bulaq imprints, this might be a more local effort though, in the early 19th c.)
