Very Good Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928) Contemporary green cloth bdg. Gilt lettering in Arabic script on the spine. Large roy. 8vo. (25 x 18 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). 402 p. Exceedingly rare first and only Turkish edition in book form published after serializing in "Tercüman-i Hakîkât" Newspaper [i.e. Interpreter of Truth], of Swedish explorer Sven Hedin's second expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899-1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet, and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim, and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried-out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the 340 by 310 meters (1,120 by 1,020 ft) former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an araba) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper, and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water. During his travels in 1900 and 1901, he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India. This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert. While the original edition and English edition occasionally appear at auction, the Turkish edition has never been seen on the market. Özege 20996.; TBTK 13181.; OCLC shows only two records in Leiden and Bogaziçi Universities, not in American and other European libraries worldwide: 67059522.
