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Books, Autographs & Prints

Tuesday 11 November 2025 e Wednesday 12 November 2025, 03:00 PM • Rome

253

Viaggi - Letteratura Turca

Donado [Donà], Giovanni Battista

On Turkish Literature, 1688

Estimate

€ 200 - 400

Sold

€ 968

The price includes buyer's premium

Information

Venice, Andrea Poletti, 1688. 12°, 140 x 75 mm. Engraving on the title page, 4 folded leaves with musical notations at the end of the volume, missing leaves F6-7 and F11-12 (blank), modern cardboard binding, red edges. A perfect copy.

Specialist Notes

First edition of the first modern survey of "Turkish literature" published . Extremely rare.

The book is a survey of Ottoman studies in the fields of grammar, poetry, logic, mathematics, geometry, optics, music, medicine, herbal alchemy, chemistry, history, politics, geography, and devotion, interspersed with translations prepared by the Venetian dragoman Gianrinaldo Carli (who also translated Katib Çelebi into Italian) and other dragoman apprentices. The book concludes with an exhortation to translate more books from Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. The nominal author, Giovanni Battista Donà, had been Venetian bailo (resident consul) in Istanbul from 1680 to 1684, but the book is the fruit of a large collection and translation project undertaken by a group of young dragoman apprentices who worked under Donà in the Venetian embassy in Istanbul. The German philosopher Leibniz, passing through Venice in 1690, observed that On Literature was the only “new” title he had discovered there.

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