[Rarebooks] fa: Jackson - ACCOUNT OF TIMBUCTOO AND HOUSA + Barbary/Morocco/Sudan - w/ MAPS 1820

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September, 23. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y83us2aq

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


James Grey Jackson: An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa, Territories in the Interior of Africa, by El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny; with Notes, Critical and Explanatory. To which is added, Letters Descriptive of Travels through West and South Barbary, and Across the Mountains of Atlas; also, Fragments, Notes, and Anecdotes; Specimens of the Arabic Epistolary Style, &c. &c. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1820. First edition; 8vo (22 cm) in early/period half calf and marbled boards, gilt-lettered spine label, marbled page edges; xxx + 547 + [1] pp.; with two folding engraved maps highlighted in red (complete).

An important and rather uncommon primary source for the period, with much on Morocco, Sudan, and Timbuktu (a.k.a. Timbuctoo, Tombouctoo, etc.) in present-day Mali. The account of Timbuktu, then little more than a semi-mythical place name to Europeans, was orally related to the author by a young "Muselman, a native of Tetuan," who, "at the age of fourteen years, accompanied his father to Timbuctoo, from which town, after a residence of three years, he proceeded to Housa; and after residing at the latter two years, he returned to Timbuctoo, where he continued seven years..." (from the introduction). Jackson was for some years the British Resident at Mogodor (i.e. Mogador, present-day Essaouira, Morocco) and the work includes detailed descriptions of that region as well, the Atlas Mountains, Rabat, Tangier, etc.

Binding with rubbing and wear, joints cracked with the front board loosening but holding; traces of old cellophane tape repairs; front paste-down with the bookplate of the (Masonic) Wisconsin Consistory Library, shelving number discreetly stamped on the verso of the title-page (no other library marks); offsetting to and from the folding maps, intermittent toning to the leaves, occasional light spotting, more pronounced on the last 15 leaves; otherwise quite clean and sound.