A travers le Turkestan russe

First edition, illustrated with 265 engravings (including 70 heliogravure plates on thick paper with captioned tissue guards), after the author's own photographs, and including a folding color map at the end of the volume.

Contemporary binding in half tawny morocco with marbled boards, spine with five raised bands framed by black fillets, red morocco title label, some rubbing to spine and headcap, gilt double fillet and garland borders on covers, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, top edge gilt.

Scattered light foxing, mostly at the beginning of the volume.

Only edition of this superb publication on the Muslim kingdoms absorbed into the Russian Empire during the 19th century (Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva), in what is now Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Though dated 1902, the work was in fact issued in December 1901, and is notable not only for its meticulously composed illustrations after the author’s own photographs, but also for its accurate ethnographic documentation of local customs and Muslim festivals.

Photographer and explorer Hugues Krafft (1853–1935), son of Baron Wilhelm Krafft, inherited a vast fortune after the death of his parents (in 1877 and 1880 respectively), which enabled him to dedicate himself to his passion for travel.

This journey, undertaken from October 1898 to June 1899 across Russian Turkestan, was both his last major expedition and his most renowned, as the regions he visited were still largely unknown in the West at the time.