English: RELAND, Adriaan. Prima elementa linguae persicae nitidissime conscriptae Adriani Relandi. 1705. [Utrecht], 1705. 34.5 × 22 cm. Persian manuscript. 60 ff. 16 lines to the page, written in clear script. With chapter title in red and occasional red rubrications throughout. Contemporary brownish red calf, marbled endpapers.

A wonderful manuscript on the foundations of the Persian language by the Dutch orientalist scholar, cartographer and philologist Adriaan Reland. His profound knowledge of the language led to Reland becoming professor of oriental languages at Utrecht University in 1701. He had made himself a name as scholar and polyglot, interested in all matters relating to the Middle East. Reland accepted the nomination by giving a lecture on the importance of the Persian language and related Oriental scripts. The Persian language, Reland ascribed great importance to the Persian language for the study of Scripture and its influence on authors of the classical Antiquity. His Dissertationes miscellaneae contained, among other, one work on the Persian influence on the Talmud. Reland remained interested in the Persian language and culture throughout his career and became one of the most influential proponents of the study of Persian in the west in the eighteenth century. Reland was an avid collector of books and manuscripts which he acquired at auctions from the estates of deceased colleagues or through his connections in the East. Many of his 2,500 books and 200 manuscripts were sold at auction to individual scholars and collectors after the death of his son in 17, with the Vatican Library being the only institution to buy a significant number of his works, where they form the foundation of the important Vaticani Indiani collection. The largest collection of his works can be found in Leiden University Library, having arrived there through various means. The earliest reference to his Prima elementa linguae persicae appeared in the auction catalogue of his son J. H. Relandt in 1761. The book later found its way into the hands of the German reformed theologien Sebald Rau and professor of Oriental languages at the University of Utrecht. It was sold in the auction after his death in 1818 and the manuscript can be traced to the Parisian bookseller A. Franck, active during the 1860s.

Provenance: estate auction of Adrian Reland’s son J.H. Relandt in 1761, estate auction of the German oriental philologist and reformed theologian Sebald Rau in 1818, later offered by the Parisian bookseller A. Franck Libraire Française et étrangère, Ancienne et Moderne

(active during 1860s)