Kilala wa Dimna; Water color Plates by Roman Strealovsky
Dar el Maarif, 1941. First Thus. Brown flex board with wear along spine edges, tri-color illustraiton of a regal lion on the cover. An important 20th century Arabic example of an illustrated Kalila wa Dimna is Abd-al-Wahh b Azz m’s edition of the aforementioned AS manuscript. This edition has been repeatedly reprinted, while copies of the 1st edition are extremely rare. In 1941, the Egyptian publisher D r al-Ma ref celebrated its the 50th anniversary with this publication of a classical work of Arabic adab literature. The renowned intellectual h osayn (1889-1973) contributed a foreword (pp. 7-12), while Azz m argued in his introduction (pp. 13-51) for the superiority of the AS manuscript over the Lebanese one edited by Cheikho. Azz m’s text is accompanied by 13 color plates of Persianate miniature paintings (Plate vi) by Roman Strekalovsky, a Russian artist who in the 1950s was associated with the American University in Cairo. But these Orientalist miniatures are usually overlooked whenever Arabists and Iranists discuss this edition (e.g., Sadan, p. 139 n. 14; de Blois, p. 66. Encyclopedia Iranica). Very good with uncut top and fore edge, a few small edge tears (>1 cm.) on a handful of pages. Item #3296
Kalila wa-Dimna (Kalila and Dimna) is a widely circulated collection of Oriental fables of Indian origin, composed in Sanskrit possibly as early as the third century BC. The fables were translated into Arabic in the eighth century by the Persian Ibn al-Muqaffa', a highly educated writer and influential courtier. To this day, al-Muqaffa's translation is considered an unsurpassed masterpiece of Arabic artistic prose, and numerous translations into European and Oriental languages dating from the 10th to the 14th centuries derive from his version. Influences of al-Muqaffa's translation also are apparent in such important Western literary works as La Fontaine's Fables and Goethe's Reinecke Fuchs. Kalila wa-Dimna is a kind of mirror for princes. Questions of social life and of princely wisdom are explained on the basis of stories taken from the animal kingdom. (LoC).
Price: $1,250.00