Il Nuovo Erpennio, ossia corso teorico-pratico di lingua araba nel quale con metodo affatto nuovo, facile e progressivo, ai principi della lingua correttamente scritta, si aggiungono le pratiche della lingua parlata dalla gente colta nelle varie regioni di Asia e Africa

Extremely rare first edition of this work comprising a course intended for students of Arabic at the University of Turin.

No copies recorded in the CCF or the CCI. The title refers to Thomas Van Erpe’s Grammatica arabica [= Erpennio in Italian], published in Leiden in 1613.

Contemporary-style half black cloth over marbled paper boards, smooth spine, unrestamped and restored, bookplate pasted to front pastedown, modern binding.

In 1861, Colonel Luigi Calligaris (1808-1870), who had served from 1833 as an instructor to the beylical army of Tunisia, was permanently recalled to Piedmont and, in recognition of his expertise in Oriental languages, was appointed professor of vernacular Arabic at the University of Turin.

He held this post until his death, contributing to the development of Oriental studies in the young Kingdom of Italy. He even established in Turin a printing office furnished with Arabic type and published there a journal in that language, subsidized by the government.

Copy from the library of the celebrated lawyer and collector Alexander Meyrick Broadley (1847-1916), with his armorial bookplate dated 1895 pasted to the front endpapers, authorial presentation inscription by Luigi Calligaris on the title-page (though the recipient's name is lacking, the copy having been slightly shaved at the upper margin).

Owing to the many exiles he imposed upon himself in order to evade English law, Broadley lived and practiced for a time in Tunisia from 1872 onward, which perhaps explains the presence of this work in his library, otherwise more particularly devoted to the Napoleonic epic.