32mo. 320pp. Second edition. A French-Arabic textbook, here with impressive typographic innovation to suit Arabic script to the printed object. The book, both as an effort in linguistic translation and as a collaborative project between French aristocrat and Egyptologist Jean-Baptiste (Henry) de Vaujany and Middle-Eastern editor and translator Moustapha-Bey Radouan, exemplifies a moment in the French colonial enterprise, its equally commercial and cultural fascination with North Africa and Egypt in particular. Scholar Lisbeth Zack situates the publication within a larger 19th-century surge in similar French-Arabic textbooks, citing this one as a cumulative and corrective work, predicated on previous, similar textbooks. She even goes so far as to contextualize the work within this environment of copying and replication, noting that this series of publications were legally plagiaristic, even despite their obvious differences. Zack also notes the inconsistences in transcription, suggesting that these expose translation and transliteration as less about lexical accuracy than about the negotiation of the relationship between France and its colonies (or desired colonies).
Bound in cloth-backed boards with title page reprinted at upper cover. Paper spine label somewhat chipped, mild edgewear and trace exterior soiling, professional repair to front hinge. Near fine. Quite scarce in this earlier edition.