Miftah al-lugha [= The Key of the Persian Language].

8vo (20 x 13,5 cm): [112-2bl.] ff., 13 ll., on paper, written in Ottoman Turkish (area: 15 x 8,5 cm) (2nd quire loosening, some soiling and spotting, partly waterstained, occ. tiny worm holes).

Contemp. quarter leather, covers with gauffered paper, flat spine (joint splitting, head and tail missing).

Ottoman treatise on the Persian language, written in 869 A.H. (= 1490/91 C.E.), with a Persian-Turkish glossar. The leaves are provided with a thumb index. Enriched with 7 miniatures added and mounted on individual pages of text and made with watercolours and gold on a gouached ground (18th or 19th c.): astronomer with pupil, telescopes and instruments; two astronomers with large sextant; 9 astronomers with instruments (after the miniature of the observatory of Taqi ad-Din in Istanbul ca. 1577); two circular representations: the earth on a turtle, enclosed by a snake, surrounded by characters as well as 4 astronomers sitting on the ground; double-sheet star map in 2 hemispheres with signs of the zodiac; armillary sphere; schematic representation of solar and lunar eclipses. The first blank f. with a stamp in the shape of an Ottoman axe blade, the majority of the miniatures on the backing paper at one corner with an oval stamp with tughra, the same and another stamp also on the last f.