Our Notes & References

A rare work, finely illustrated with large folding facsimiles, and edited in St. Petersburg by the ‘founder of Turkology at St Petersburg University’ (St. Petersburg State University).

We couldn’t trace any other example on the market in recent decades, and OCLC gives only Erfurt and Leiden, with apparently no copies in America.

With associated provenance: Jean-Jacques-Pierre Desmaisons (1807-73) also known as Petr Ivanovich Demezon, was a diplomat and compiler of an important Persian-French dictionary. He studied in St Petersburg and Kazan, was a co-founder of the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society, and undertook diplomatic missions to Iran on behalf of the Russian state.

Anton Osipovich Mukhlinskii (1808-77) was a Russian orientalist of Lithuanian Tatar descent, and a specialist in Turkic linguistics and literature. His research interests included the history of Islam within the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. From 1832 to 1836 Mukhlinsky was in the Ottoman Empire, largely at the famous university attached to the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, from which he obtained several manuscripts. In 1839 he was appointed the head of the Department of Turkish Philology and taught Ottoman Turkish at St Petersburg University. Shortly thereafter the University became the centre of all Oriental scholarship in the Russian Empire, after the thriving departments in Kazan and Odessa were abruptly shut down out of fear that Muslims there would establish stronger ties with the Sultan than with the Tsar (cf. Sahin, p. 605). After that point only the Lazarev Institute in Moscow could rival the University in its expertise.

The book itself is intended for students, and more specifically translators, of Ottoman Turkish, containing multiple passages and translation exercises, including some Turkish proverbs. Seven fine folding plates reproduce important historical documents and Ottoman firmans in facsimile, as the Sultan’s mandates and decrees would have constituted an important part of the education of any student of Ottoman Turkish.

Provenance

Desmaisons (signature on title, most probably Jean-Jeacques-Pierre Desmaisons, 1807-73).

Bibliography

Brockhaus and Efron. 1897. ‘[Mukhlinskii, Anton Osipovich]’. In Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, vol. 20; Encyclopaedia Iranica. 2026. ‘DESMAISONS, JEAN-JACQUES-PIERRE’; Şahin, Liaisan. 2010. ‘Russian Turkology: From Past to Present’. Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi, no. 15 (May): 591–644; St. Petersburg State University. 2026. ‘Biografika — Mukhlinskii Anton Osipovich’.