POSTEL, Guillaume. - Lot 168

POSTEL, Guillaume. De la République des Turcs, & là ou l'occasion s'offera, des meurs & Loy de tous Muhamedites. [Followed by]. Histoire et considération de l'origine, loy et coustume des Tartares, Persiens, arabes, turcs, & tous autres Ismaelites... [Suivi de] La tierce partie des orientales histoires, ou est exposée la condition, puissance, & revenu de l'Empire Turquesque, avec toutes les provinces & païs generalement depuis 950 ans en ça par tous Ismaelites conquis... Poitiers, Enguilbert de Marnef, 1560. Three parts in one volume in-8 square, In-8 square, (4) ff, 127 pp. ; 57 pp. ; 1 bl. f., (7)-90 pp., posterior speckled fawn calf, 5-ribbed spine, fawn title page, triple gilt fillet on covers, gilt roulette on endpapers, red edges (rubbing on covers and edges, upper jaw slightly split, corners dull, lower cover partly faded with minor restorations, 1st title page browned with short lower margin, restored tear pp. 100-101). Precious first edition of the collection of three books known as La République des Turcs by the orientalist humanist Guillaume Postel. A Renaissance intellectual and mystic, Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), a philologist, linguist and Christian Kabbalist, was a self-taught polyglot who was as much a diplomatic traveler as he was a writer of religious works, which got him into trouble with the Inquisition and the Papacy. He accompanied Jean de La Forest's embassy to Constantinople in the 1530s to bring back oriental manuscripts for the Royal Library and information for François I. With a fine, well-documented account, he draws from his journey an in-depth analysis of Ottoman society, driven by the ambition for dialogue and Christian conversion that animated him until his death. "Postel warns that he is writing about what he saw, as a witness to Turkish power and Suleiman's greatness. This is not the chronicle of a Christian escaped from the East; nor is it a more or less romanticized travelogue. It's a mission report. And therein lies the scandal for French opinion, which for the past twenty years has been reading very different things about this Eastern empire." (C. Postel, Les Écrits de Guillaume Postel...1538-1579). The three title pages bear a rare typographical mark in black by Marnef in Poitiers, a woodcut of a man with a mirror and a motto in Greek. "His work is not so much a descriptive account of his travels as a collection of information gathered during his travels and from other sources. The third book, La Tierce Partie des Histoires Orientales, offers a rare and richly accurate picture of the Ottoman Empire's system of government" (Blackmer). "Postel's work on Ottoman Empire ... represents the fruition of his experiences in the East and his appreciation of Islam" (Atabey, 977). Brunet, IV, 839; Graesse, Trésor de livres rares, 424. Atabey, 977.