Al-Coranus s. Lex Islamitica Muhammedis, filii Abdallae Pseudoprophetae, ad optimorum codicum fidem edita ex Museo Abrahami Hinckelmann, D.

[1, 1 bl., 1, 1 bl., 1, 1 bl., 1, 1 bl., 1, 1 bl., 80]-560-[10] pp. ("Sententia Muhammedis" bound after Latin title; sl. toned, occasional minor dampstaining or spotting).

Contemp. half vellum, marbled paper on covers, flat spine, red edges (rubbed, loosening at end, corners def., sm. def. at head). Very good copy.

“First and only ed. of Hinckelmann’s Arabic text of the Qur’an, the 2nd ed. of the Arabic Qur’an, with a 36-page Latin introduction by the editor making extensive reference to the earlier literature. The first complete Arabic ed. of the Qur’an was printed at Venice ca. 1537/38, intended for distribution in the Middle East, but the entire ed. was thought to have been destroyed until one copy turned up in the 1980s. Hinckelmann’s ed. was therefore the 1st ed. available to European scholars, missionaries or Islamic readers. It was followed by Ludovico Marracci’s Arabic and Latin ed. published at Padua in 1698, whose two folio volumes and extensive (anti-Islamic) commentary made it both expensive and inconvenient to use. The editions published at St Petersburg (from 1789) and Kazan (from 1803) for the use of Islamic groups in the Russian Empire were almost unknown in Europe, so the present ed. remained the primary source for European knowledge of the Qur’an for 140 years, until Flügel’s 1834 Leipzig ed. VD17 has four different entries for this work, with different fingerprints, but they are all the same edition.” (Forum) Abraham Hinckelmann (1652-1695), a Hamburg theologian, studied at Wittenberg and collected many Oriental manuscripts. He compiled a Quranic lexicon in manuscript and planned a Latin translation of the Koran, but this was never realised. Arabic title. Latin title in red and black. Arabic (woodcut) and Latin half-titles. Latin introduction. Text in vocalized Arabic throughout.
Ref. Cp. VD-17 3:314172A & 7:707063A & 32:680463E & 39:139712T, all with 43 or 44 prelim. ff. - our copy has 45 prelim. ff. (the only other complete copy known is in the Russian State Library). - Hamilton (Europe and the Arab world) 33. - Smitskamp (Philologia orientalis) 360. - Schnurrer (Bibl. Arabica) 376.
Prov. Contemp. marginal Latin annotations on pp. 2, 57, 493-495. - Some interlinear annotations. - Monastic library stamp and tickets.