"First printing of the Pentateuch in Arabic characters" (Smitskamp). Edited by Thomas Erpenius and printed with his influential nashk Arabic types, cut under his direction by Arent Corsz. Hogenacker in Leiden. It gives the text of a 13th-century translation of the Pentateuch in the Maghreb dialect (spoken in Mauritania). Erpenius was one of the most distinguished orientalists and by far the best Arabist of his day. He published an influential Arabic grammar and several excellent critical editions. His own private printing office, equipped with Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic and Turkish type, produced its first works as early as 1615. Hogenacker later cut more Arabic types and his heirs sold Arabic and other punches and matrices to Oxford University for their embryonic printing office.
With bookplate, owners inscription and library stamp of Verplanck Colvin (1847-1920), an American surveyor, engineer, naturalist and lawyer; and on the title-page an owners inscription of "H. Jo. Gottlieb Stimmel", possibly the art dealer Johann Gottlieb Stimmel (1766-1836) from Leipzig. Occasional spots, some leaves with a minor waterstain in the upper or lower margin, nor affecting the text. A good copy, with generous margins. Binding slightly soiled and with a restoration to the front inner hinge, but otherwise good. Breugelmans 1622-2; Darlow & Moule 1645; De Nave, Philologia Arabica 86; Smitskamp, Philologia orientalis 86.