Histoire de l'Empire ottoman depuis son origine jusqu'à nos jours. Ouvrage puisé aux sources les plus authentiques et rédigé sur des documens et des manuscrits la plupart inconnus en Europe. Traduit de l'allemand sur les notes et sous la direction de l'auteur par J.-J. Hellert

Paris, Bellizard, Barthès, Dufour and Lowell, 1835-1843. Eighteen octavo text volumes and one folio atlas.

First edition in French of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall's Histoire de l'Empire ottoman depuis son origine jusqu'à nos jours, translated by J.-J. Hellert "from the German, using the author's notes and under his supervision". Publication began in 1835, the same year in which the ten-volume German original was completed, making this the first transmission into French of Hammer's monumental history of the Ottoman Empire. Atabey, 557 for the text and 569 for the atlas; Blackmer, 788 for the atlas; Hage Chahine, 2105.

Contemporary brown half shagreen, spines with five raised bands framed with black fillets, uniformly sunned and faded, marbled paper boards, comb-marbled endpapers and pastedowns, top edges gilt. A few corners slightly rubbed and a defect at the foot of one board edge of volume XV. Some foxing in the text volumes.

The eighteen volumes contain eight folding tables giving the genealogies of Ottoman princes and high dignitaries. The final two volumes supplement the historical narrative with an extensive documentary apparatus devoted, among other subjects, to offices and dignities within the Empire, treaties, foreign embassies and the religious monuments of Constantinople.

The atlas, dated 1843 on its title page, survives in its remarkable original form of issue, divided into ten parts in beige paper wrappers, each with a printed blue paper label. The wrapper to the sixth part is lacking; the general map of the Ottoman Empire in the final part has been restored; some light foxing to the wrappers. The atlas is nevertheless complete with all 39 plates numbered I-XXXIX, comprising geographical maps and plans of cities, sieges and battles.

Collation of the set: Text: 1) 2 ff.n.ch., XXXV, 436 pp. – 2) 2 ff.n.ch., 530 pp., 1 f.n.ch. (errata for vols. 1 and 2), 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 1 and 2). – 3) VIII, 1 f.n.ch. (errata for vol. 3), 460 pp. – 4) 2 ff.n.ch., 476 pp., 3 ff.n.ch. (supplement to the errata for vol. 1; supplement to the errata for vol. 2; errata for vol. 4), 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 3 and 4). – 5) 2 ff.n.ch., VII, 558 pp. – 6) 2 ff.n.ch., 536 pp., 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 5 and 6). – 7) VIII, 439 pp. – 8) 2 ff.n.ch., 435 pp., 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 7 and 8). – 9) 2 ff.n.ch., 424 pp. – 10) 2 ff.n.ch., VII, 495 pp., 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 9 and 10). – 11) 2 ff.n.ch., IV, 491 pp. – 12) 2 ff.n.ch., 554 pp., 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 11 and 12). – 13) 2 ff.n.ch., IV, 391 pp. – 14) 2 ff.n.ch., 543 pp., 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 13 and 14). – 15) 2 ff.n.ch., 405 pp. – 16) 2 ff.n.ch., 507 pp., 1 folding h.t. table (genealogical tables of the princes and high dignitaries mentioned in vols. 15 and 16). – 17) 2 ff.n.ch., XLVIII, 294 pp. – 18) 2 ff.n.ch., 144 pp. and pp. 137–398. – Atlas: 2 ff.n.ch. (title dated 1843, table of maps and plans), 39 h.t. plates (numbered I to XXXIX; plates II and III forming a single map printed on two sheets), in ten parts.

In 1835 the title of the first text volume still announced only 21 maps and 15 battle plans. Eight years later, the completed atlas had grown to 39 numbered plates. The cartographical programme therefore developed alongside the translation, Hellert doing more than merely transferring Hammer's German text into French and providing the edition with its own geographical and military instrument for reading the history of the Empire.

The scale of the publication reflects the thirty years of research that preceded it. Born at Graz in 1774, Joseph von Hammer was trained from adolescence at the Oriental Academy in Vienna, where he studied the languages required for Habsburg diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire. Sent to Constantinople as an interpreter in 1799, he took part in the Egyptian campaign in 1801 with the British and Ottoman forces before returning to Constantinople as secretary to the Austrian legation from 1802 to 1804. These years gave him direct experience of the world whose historian he was to become.

After returning to the Viennese administration, Hammer transformed his diplomatic experience into a scholarly undertaking. From 1808 onwards he systematically examined the Turkish registers of the State Chancellery and subsequently worked through the imperial archives in Vienna and those of Venice. In the conclusion to his history he describes the examination of hundreds of volumes of diplomatic reports, instructions, treaties and chronicles. Alongside these European records he used printed and manuscript Ottoman historians, continually seeking to compare their accounts with the documentary evidence preserved in Western diplomatic archives.

This method explains the position occupied by the Histoire de l'Empire ottoman in nineteenth-century Oriental studies. Published in ten German volumes between 1827 and 1835, it was among the first undertakings on this scale to construct a general history of the Ottoman dynasty through the combined use of Ottoman sources and the major European diplomatic archives. Although modern scholarship has naturally revised many of Hammer's interpretations, this was the work upon which much of his scholarly reputation was established.

Hellert was more than a translator. The title itself states that he worked from Hammer's notes and under his supervision, while the accompanying atlas was prepared under Hellert's responsibility. The French version therefore became an adapted edition in its own right, carrying Hammer's immense body of documentation almost immediately into the Francophone scholarly world. Its publication continued until 1843, eight years after the completion of the German original.

The final volume offers a particularly striking example of this circulation of sources. It contains the Tableau descriptif et historique des mosquées de Constantinople, drawn from Hafız Hüseyin Ayvansarayî's Garden of the Mosques. Completed in the late eighteenth century, the Hadîkatü'l-Cevâmi' records and describes the religious monuments of Istanbul district by district. Its inclusion here provided French readers with substantial access to one of the major Ottoman sources for the religious topography of the capital.

Hammer's career soon became inseparable from the institutional development of Austrian Oriental studies. Having inherited the Styrian estate of Hainfeld in 1835, he assumed the name Hammer-Purgstall and was raised to the rank of Baron. After long involvement in attempts to establish an academy of sciences in Vienna, he saw the Imperial Academy finally founded in 1847 and became its first president, remaining in office until 1849. He died in Vienna in 1856.

The set also possesses a particularly appropriate Constantinople provenance. Each text volume bears the label of S. H. Weiss, bookseller on the Grande Rue de Péra opposite the Russian Consulate. Contemporary international directories record Weiss as a dealer in French and German books in the European quarter of Constantinople. Thus an Austrian history, translated and published in French, materially returned to the capital of the Empire whose past it sought to reconstruct.

A handsome and rare complete set of all eighteen text volumes with the atlas preserved in its original parts. The product of thirty years spent examining Ottoman and European sources, Hammer-Purgstall's major historical work received through Hellert's translation and its 39 cartographical plates a French form almost contemporary with the original, before returning, through the S. H. Weiss provenance, to the bookshops of Constantinople itself.