This 1898 Lost Gem Of Oriental Romanticism Is Intoxicating

by Stephen J. Gertz

The following is my Historical Note to a new translation of Haschisch by Fritz Lemmermayer, originally issued in 1898 and now published for the first time in English by Process Media in association with RKS Library Editions. The black and white illustrations here (as well as the original cover art in color) are by Gottfried Sieben and are taken from the first German edition. All of the striking and plentiful original illustrations are present (and faithfully reproduced) in this exciting new edition along with many supplemental illustrations that illuminate the history of the book. - SJG.

Some novels die and justifiably remain dead. A few are resurrected by bookish saviors and, re-examined, rise to deserved new life. Haschisch by Fritz Lemmermayer is one such literary Lazarus. 

During the nineteenth century Europe was infatuated with the Orient in general and the Muslim world in particular. The Ottoman Empire, which in the late 17th century beseiged Vienna and put all of Christian Europe at risk, had receded as a threat. Translations of The Arabian Nights appeared in French (1704) and English (1706), kindling popular interest in the Orient. Diplomatic and commercial ties with Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, increased during the 18th century and Turquerie, an Orientalist style imitative of Turkish culture and art, had developed into a popular fashion by century’s end. By the beginning of the 19th century literary Romanticism had established itself. Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, amongst others, lured by the exotic East, indulged, to popular success, their fascination for the foreign in their work. Oriental Romanticism, which captured their fantasies, was the result.

By mid-century the European craze for all things Oriental was at its height. The paintings and color-plate albums of Amadeo Preziosi, a Maltese count and artist who had become a resident of Istanbul, provided a lush feast for Europeans hungry for visual representations of this strange world of unusual costume, customs, and, let us not mince words, alluring women, mysterious with titillating possibility behind the veil. And, too, the use of opium and hashish in the East had captured the Romantic imagination as a gateway to the Oriental mind and fantastic visions not otherwise available to Western man. The exotic East possessed a strong sensuous undercurrent and it will come as no surprise that a genre of erotic literature arose in parallel to Oriental Romanticism to satisfy the European male’s desire, The Lustful Turk (1828) being an early example. The region was perceived to be an erogenous zone.

In Germany, Romanticism tended to look inward to Teutonic myth rather than outward to the East. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, a small group of Neo-Romantics, led by litterateur Fritz Lemmermayer in protest to modern realism, turned their eyes toward the Orient. Haschisch, Lemmermayer’s 1898 novel, is not only Oriental Romanticism’s last gasp, but its acme, the literary culmination of two centuries of feverish thought and interest in the exoticism of the East.

We would not know this, however, without the scholarship of Dr. R.K. Siegel who rescued from obscurity this novel, a book lost in the wake of literary modernism and forgotten almost as soon as it was published. It’s a book that, as an antiquarian bookseller, I first became aware of in the mid-1980s through its 1911 translation into, of all languages, Yiddish. The cover art was sensational. A few of us in the trade who had a special interest in the literature of psychotropic drugs were riveted but, preoccupied with quotidian needs, did not have the necessary time to study and determine just what this book was. Enter Dr. Siegel, a dedicated collector-scholar, a breed of book lover that has so often (and to no financial gain whatsoever) devoted precious time to perform the bibliographical spadework for books in general and orphaned literature in particular. It was he who uncovered the first edition in German and then made the study of the novel’s history a personal mission. The results are here and marvelous.

Amadeo Preziosi, Odalisque.

A word on the novel’s illustrations by Sieben. He was unquestionably influenced by Preziosi’s artwork. Stamboul: Souvenirs d’Orient, Preziosi’s widely and wildly popular color-plate masterpiece first appeared in 1858, its fourth and final issue published in 1883 (as Stamboul: Meours et Costumes) to satisfy unabated demand. When Europeans imagined the Orient it was Preziosi’s imagery that they referenced, particularly his women of Istanbul. The faces of the women in Haschisch are directly those of Preziosi’s women. Preziosi’s image of a harem woman, languid and alluring as she is attended by her servants, tempts us with come-hither eyes as she smokes a hookah. Is she enraptured by hashish, or merely smoking tobacco? It is left to the observer to decide.

I think it safe to say, however, that readers will not have to make a decision regarding the novel’s vivid and operatic narrative. Haschisch is a literary cloud of intoxicating smoke, a phantasmagoria in print, once forgotten but now unforgettable.

•  •  •

N.B. The politics of Oriental Romanticism are not germane to this post beyond that almost every 19th century stereotype of the exotic East is found in Haschisch. Romanticism's preoccupation with love, sex, and death gets full play here. Throw in exotic drugs and Muslims and Edward Said would have had a field day with it had he lived to see this publication, which is quite something with production values that belie its cost, and a degree of scholarship that is remarkable. Dr. Siegel is a model literary detective; his informative introduction and notes cover the waterfront. It appears he hasn't missed a thing, which would be a bad thing if the story behind the book wasn't so interesting.

____________

LEMMERMAYER, Fritz. Hashish: The Lost Legend. The First English Translation of a Great Oriental Romance. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Ronald K. Siegel, PH.D. Translations by Hermann Schibli (German); Mindle Crystal Gross (Yiddish). Historical Note by Stephen J. Gertz. Port Townsend, WA: Process Media in association with RKS Library Editions, 2013 [i.e. Feb. 2014].

First edition in English, limited to 418 copies numbered and signed by Ronald K. Siegel, PH.D. Quarto (10 x 6 1/2 inches). xx, 118 pp. on heavy glossy paper. Illustrated throughout in black & white and color. Full blue suede cloth with color illustration laid-on. Gilt lettered spine. Housed in a red suede cloth slipcase. $65.

 

Full Disclosure: I sit on the Editorial Board of RKS Library Editions, along with William Dailey, Michael Horowitz, and Steven B. Karch, M.D., FFFLM.

__________

__________

Mr. Bunting in Paradise

by Alastair Johnston

Bunting's Persia. Translations by Basil Bunting. Edited by Don Share. Flood Editions, 2012.

Ask your distant cousins out there in Middle America what they fear most and they will tell you "Muslims." Ask them to explain the difference between Muslims and, say, Mormons, and they will hesitate, but you, dear enlightened reader of Booktryst, will know the answer, won't you? Within Islam there are sects that are as different as Unitarians and Anglicans or Copts and Catholics.

A Muslim sect that has a broad appeal in the West is Sufism. Sufis are poets and philosophers: Hell, some are even into the odd alcoholic beverage. Nevertheless it may come as a surprise that the best-selling poet in America today, with over a quarter of a million copies in print, is a Persian Sufi poet named Rumi.

The truth is, the Sufis are fun and very easy to love. As Manuchehri says,

   We, men of wine are we, meat are we, music...
   Well, then! Wine we have, meat we have, music...

Bunting's Persia is a delight for a number of reasons. Not least the wonderful Sufi poetry it contains, but also because it is another volume by an under-appreciated poet of the twentieth century, Basil Bunting (1900-85), whose Collected Poems (Fulcrum, 1965, reprinted by Oxford University Press in 1978) is anorexically thin. Bunting didn't write a lot, in fact he took a 15-year break from writing, working as the financial editor of a newspaper until a young poet, Tom Pickard, tracked him down and persuaded him to get back to verse. The result was Briggflatts (1966) which Cyril Connolly (writing in the London Times) hailed as the best poetry book since Eliot's Four Quartets.

Bunting in Rapallo, 1930

Like Eliot, Bunting was under the Modernist influence of Ezra Pound and hung out with him and W.B. Yeats in Rapallo in the 1930s. He had known Shaw and Lawrence in London; in Paris he worked with Ford Madox Ford and got drunk with Hemingway. His first book was published in Milan in 1930, his second in Galveston in 1950.

But what's the Persian link? Bunting found a ratty copy of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh translated into French and decided (with Pound's urging) he needed to read the original, so with the help of a dictionary he taught himself classical Farsi. This came in handy when World War II broke out. Bunting had spent the First World War in jail in England as a Conscientious Objector (he was a Quaker), and decided this time around to enlist in the Royal Air Force. As an interpreter (despite the lack of similarity between classical and modern Persian) he was sent to Isfahan. After the war he became Vice Consul in the British Embassy.

He married a Persian girl and became foreign correspondent for the Times of London. He absorbed the culture through his pores and told anecdotes like the one about three men who went out of the city on Friday night to enjoy themselves in their own ways. When they returned the gates were locked. The drunkard said, "Let's batter down the door!" The man who smoked hashish said, "No, let's crawl through the keyhole," but the man who smoked opium said, "No, let's lie down here 'til daybreak."

He continued (in this interview printed in a little magazine in the 1960s) by telling the story of the time he and a couple of friends — one of them happened to be the Head of the Persian Secret Police, unaware that Bunting was actually a British spy masquerading as a reporter — were smoking opium round the stove in his living-room when the stove went out. Now in Persia the usual way to light a stove is to pour paraffin over it and light the paraffin. But the coals were still hot, and so when paraffin was added the stove exploded. Bits of the stove flew across the room, almost decapitating his friend, and the drapes caught fire. The friends sat there laughing hysterically as the servants rushed in and put the flames out.

This life in Paradise ended when he was expelled by Mossadeq. An angry mob arrived at his house to get him. No one noticed when he snuck out the back way and chanted "Death to Mr Bunting" with them.

Bunting's Collected Poems is a scant 150 pages long so a new book from his hand is a delight to be savored and dipped into like a box of fresh dates.

A couple of the pieces did appear in the Collected (as the wittily named "Overdrafts"), but here they are handsomely presented (the Fulcrum book is particularly ungainly) and, besides, it's important to gather all the fragments of Bunting's Persian together as someone else might gather his Latin translations, if more turn up. Though Bunting's archive is at the  University of Durham, England, these pieces ended up in Texas. While few Americans are qualified to comment on Persian poetry in translation, there is enough understanding of the tradition to know whether these versions are valid. So what is Mr Bunting's message from beyond? Youth is fleeting, life is short, seize the day:

"Many a broken desert has been gay garden," says Rudaki. And, from the same poet,

   What can you know, my blackhaired beauty,
   what I was like in the old days?
   You tickle your lover with your curls
   but never knew the time when he had curls.

The centerpiece is a long work by Ferdowsi called "The Beginning of the Stories," and its sequel "Faridun's Sons," which is really the prelude to an epic (the work Bunting had found on the bookiniste stall that started him on this lifelong adventure), but enough of a taste to engage us. It bears a striking resemblance to King Lear: an old king divides his empire among three sons and the elder two plot against the younger. It's a bloody tale but has a pacifist message:

   Don't injure even an ant,
   it has life, life is sweet.

There is a telegraphic compression where we sense the lesson of Ez keeping Baz on track:

   A long time, Fate keeping her face veiled.
   Faridun grew old, dust drifted over the garden,
   a changed conversation, strength turned weakness by age,
   and the nobles huffed when any business was muffed.

He teases us with several short untitled poems by Manuchehri. See this lovely description of riding in the desert, away from one's loved one:

   Wind froze my blood, the pools frozen
   like silver dishes on a gold tray.

   Before morning night was blacker
   for the white snow wasting away
   and out of the hard ground rose a mud like fishglue.

The notes by Don Share fill us in on the poets, with quotes from Bunting's letters and writings: "You want the directness of some Catullus? Go to Manuchehri. You want the swiftness of Anacreon? Manuchehri.  The elaborate music of Spenser? Go to Manuchehri. ... Satire, direct and overwhelming, Manuchehri all alone — no competitor."

Sa'di pours his heart out in aching love poems, but manages to work in

   Many well-known people have been packed away in cemeteries
   there is no longer any evidence that they ever existed.

Perhaps the best-known of these poets is Hafiz (1315-90) who advises us

    If you
   want eternity do so
   they'll never use past tense of you.
   Drink as Hafiz, you'll gather impetus
   world without end.

Many have interpreted the Sufis' thirst for alcohol as an allegory of mysticism: Bunting doubts this, dismissing Robert Bly and Ralph Waldo Emerson's interpretations. Sometimes a bottle of wine is just that:

   I'm the worse for drink again, it's
   got the better of me.
   A thousand thanks to the red wine
   put colour in my face.
   I'll kiss the hand that gathered the grapes.
   May he never trudge who trod them out!

The collection ends with "The Pious Cat" a children's story by Zakani that was previously published in a limited edition by Bertram Rota (200 copies printed at the Stamperia Valdonega in Verona), in 1986.

Now that he is among the immortals, Bunting can invite us to journey back to the 11th century with him:

   Bid them come and see our noble century
   and read our poetry and despair —

__________
__________

Welcome to Wahabiland. Now Leave. (1912)

by Stephen J. Gertz

First edition in English, 1916.

 "The little mud-walled settlement that Abdul Aziz [ibn Sa'ud] recaptured for his family in January 1902 was remote from the twentieth century in almost every sense. Western map-makers could not even put a latitude and longitude on the place; Riyadh was a dot placed capriciously somewhere in the central wilderness. In 1865 one Englishman had ventured across the 250 miles of desert that separated the town from the Persian Gulf. But Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Pelly was only the fifth European known to have visited Riyadh n the entire course of its recorded history, and the next Westerner did not arrive until 1912" (Lacy, Robert. The Kingdom, p. 55).

That Westerner was explorer Anders Christian Barclay Raunkiaer who, in 1912, led an expedition sponsored by the Royal Danish Geographical Society through Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. He recorded his experience in Gennem Wahhabiternes land paa Kumelryg (Copenhagen, 1913).

The journey was fraught with tension.

"Days spent lying in camp like this are by no means pleasant ... As day follows day, I see myself observed with ever more hostile eyes ... As things are, the rumor of an infidel's approach will spread to Shakrah and other towns in South Nedjd long before I arrive there myself; and the more malignant that rumour, the smaller the probability of escape from my adventure with a whole skin at the end."

Why?

By 1912, Al Sa'ud (the House of Sa'ud) was well on its way to reconquering  the Nadj,  Arabia's central province and the family's ancestral home, from the Al Rashid, allied with the Ottomans, and their most formidable enemies. Originally spreading outward from Riyadh, their home town, in the mid-Eighteenth century, Al-Sa'ud, then led by Abdul Aziz ibn Sa'ud, the patriarch of modern Saudi Arabia, then began its campaign toward rule over the entire peninsula and nationhood. Their military conquests brought religious conquest with them.

In 1744, the Sa'ud family allied itself with Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, The Teacher, a qadi, a religious judge. Wahhab, born in 1703, had dedicated himself to God, studying the Koran and interpreting it in its most literal and strict sense. His rigid, doctrinaire and dogmatic strain of Islam did not endear him to his neighbors. Muhammad ibn Sa'ud, the ruler of Al-Dar'iyah, the family's initial power base, and the first member of the House of Sa'ud to emerge from the desert into history, invited Wahhab to preach in his territory.

Strict reform followed, and  thenceforth followed wherever Al-Sa'ud led. Wahhab was the John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Brigham Young of Islam in Arabia. The House of Sa'ud and Wahabi have remained firmly allied since that fateful meeting in 1744, the families early joined through marriage. The political ambitions of one man met the religious ambitions of another and resulted in conquest and political cohesiveness through a singular vision of religious purity and strength by getting back to the fundamentals, which resonated with the Arab people.

In 1912, then, the House of Sa'ud was on the move and the Wahabi strain of Islam with it. Undisguised hostility toward foreigners, scarcely seen curiosities, was acutely heightened by strict disdain  for the corrupting influences they brought with them. While Abdul Aziz ibn Sa'ud had contact with the British for assistance against the Ottomans, he was, perhaps the only Arab to be inviting to an obvious infidel.

In 1916 Raunkiaer's  Gennem Wahhabiternes land paa Kumelryg  was translated into English as Through Wahabiand on Camel-Back; the British, in the midst of WWI, wanted to know all they could about Arabia, a region of strategic importance - the Arab revolt against the Ottomans, instigated by the British Foreign Office, was underway. (Central Arabia, while nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire, had gained de facto independence when Abdul Aziz and his guerrilla army chased the Turks out in 1906).

The first edition of Through Wahabiland... (reprinted in 1969 by G. Routledge) has become an extremely rare book. OCLC/KVK records only two copies in libraries worldwide, at the British Library and at Oxford, and there have been no copies at auction within the last thirty-five years.

Bonham's- New York is offering a copy, one of only an estimated 100 printed, at its Fine Books and Manuscripts sale , 10 October 10, 2011. It is estimated to sell for $6000 - $9,000.

__________

RAUNKIAER, Barclay (1889-1915). Through Wahabiland on Camel-back: An Account of a Journey of Exploration in Eastern and Central Arabia undertaken at the instance and the cost of the Royal Danish Geographical Society in 1912. Cairo: Government Press, 1916.  Scarce first edition in English of  Gennem Wahhabiternes land paa Kumelryg (København: 1913). Octavo. viii, 140 pp. Original tan cloth.

__________

Image courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.

__________

Suggested reading: 

The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'ud by Robert Lacy.

A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani.

The Arab Mind by Raphael Patai.

__________

__________

The Amazing House of Bookshelves

by Stephen J. Gertz

The wooden structure at center appears to be a standard residence.

But step inside and it is anything but standard.

The client, living in Moriguchi, Osaka, Japan, owned an extensive collection of books centering upon Islamic history. He wanted a combination private residence-study with maximum capacity for storage and exhibition of his library.  So, in 2006, the Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio of Kyoto designed the Shelf Pod, in essence a house of bookshelves with a bed and bathroom.

Pinch me. Am I dreaming?

"In order to satisfy this demand effectively, we designed a lattice structure made from 25mm thick laminated pine-board which serve as book-shelves. The dimensions of each shelf are as follows: 360mm height, 300mm width and 300mm depth. All of the architectural elements in this space (stairs, windows, desks, chairs, etc) have been designed on the basis of this shelf scale, with the aim of achieving geometrical harmony which is comparable to Islamic Architecture. This innovative structural system affords not only large amount of book storage, but the possibility of flexible floor level which can be delivered from every height of bookshelf. Each space for different activity rise up helically, giving the impression of exploring a wooden jungle gym.

"The original image of this structure is derived from the Japanese woodcraft of Kumiko (lattice). The structural integrity against an earthquake is provided by a panel of plywood board nailed on the shelf. Initially, the horizontal resistant force guaranteed by the panels was examined in a real-scale model. Further to this, an analysis of the whole structure was performed in order to determine the placement of the windows and panels. The inter-locking laminated pine-board was manufactured precisely in advance and assembled on-site. Similarly, the pyramid-shaped roof was assembled on-site, from 12 pieces of prefabricated wooden roof panel. The completed roof has a thickness of only 230mm and sensitively covers the whole space like the dome of a Mosque.

"In addition to its unique structure, the outer wall employs the construction techniques of a traditional Japanese storehouse Dozou. The bamboo net wall foundation layer was attached to the lattice structure and the clay and straw mixture was applied to the foundation by the trowel. Then the red cedar panels forms exterior wall. The interior clay wall was finished with white plaster. These techniques are in accordance with urban fireproofing specifications, as well as maintaining a suitably humid environment for the storage of books."

In a bathroom flush with bookshelves
you'd need Ex-Lax to get me out of there.

 Site : Moriguchi, JAPAN
Design : Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio / Kazuya Morita ,Issei Kawashima.
Structural Engineer : Mitsuda Structural Consultant.
__________

With thanks to Elmar Seibel of Ars Libri Ltd, who led me to Alex Johnson and his wonderful Bookshelf Blog, which led me to  the Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio.
__________
__________

From Here to Timbuktu and Ubiquitous Books

by Linda Hedrick

Image courtesy of the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project

Timbuktu! The mere name conjures up images of an exotic, remote location in the middle of the desert.  The smell of spices, the chatter of foreign tongues, caravans traveling to and fro, all these thoughts create a romantic mystique. The city is legendary in the Western mind, yet the reality of it remains hidden to us.

Traders headed for Timbuktu.  Artist unknown.

Timbuktu has a long history as a trading center. it was a natural convergence point linking African peoples with Arab, Berber, and Jewish traders in North Africa, and through them indirectly with European traders. 

A cache of stored manuscripts.

And at its peak it was it was known as a city of books.  

Manuscripts showing mathematics and astronomy.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Home to a prestigious university thought to be one of the first in the world,  Timbuktu functioned as a center of Islamic learning, attracting scholars from Alexandria, and Baghdad, and Mecca. Books and manuscripts were valuable merchandise, and scholars collected them for their libraries from the lively book trade.   These private libraries, some no more than a row of shelved books, are now part of the sixty libraries thought to be in existence today.

Nasir al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahman ibn al-Hajj al-Amin al-Tawathi
al-Ghalawi Kashf al-Ghummah fi Nafa al-Ummah
"The Important Stars Among the Multitude of the Heavens"
Copied in 1733.

These libraries form a collection of approximately 700,000 manuscripts.  Some scholars believe there are still 300,000 to 700,000 more in the territory.  Many of these valuable manuscripts were handed down as family secrets for generations.  Although teaching was done within the three mosques that once comprised the university, many scholars taught in their own homes, using their own libraries.

A copy of the Koran from the 12th century.
According to notes from the text, it was bought
for a Moroccan king with gold.
Photo by Candace Felt/New York Times

There are basically three types of manuscripts extant:  purchased manuscripts from North Africa, the Middle East, and Andalusia; copies of manuscripts reproduced in Timbuktu; and original manuscripts composed in Timbuktu.  Most of the manuscripts are written in Arabic, but some in local languages using Arabic script.  Many manuscripts include marginal notations that are valuable as insights to a scholar’s thinking.

Certificate of emancipation for a female slave.
Drawn in the manner prescribed by Islamic law, this certificate
gives a detailed physical description of the woman being freed.

Subjects addressed by the manuscripts cover a wide variety of subjects, from religious texts, theology, philosophy, and poems, to legal documents, Islamic law, math, science, and music.

al-Hajj Umar ibn Said al Futi
Rimah Hizb al-Rahim 'ala Nuhuri Hizb al-Rahim
"The Spear of the Merciful Against the Throat of the Reviled"
Copied 1858.

There are three major mosques extant today – Djingareyber, Sankoré and Sidi Yahya – and all of them are on UNESCO’s world heritage list.  Begun in 2008, the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project serves to catalogue and conserve the manuscripts, as part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme and a NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) Cultural Project.

Ismaël Diadié Haïdara with collected family manuscripts.

Photo by Candace Felt/New York Times

The Library of Congress began digitizing Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu, working with scholars, manuscript owners, and government officials of Mali.  In 2004, the LOC began a cooperative project with the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library on the WWW, making it easier for scholars to have access to these important manuscripts.  The Mamma Haidara library is the result of generations of book collecting by the Haidara family, and contains more than 5,000 manuscripts dating from the 16th century.

Ahmad ibn Sulayman al-Rasmuki

Kashf al-Hijab li-Asfiya'el-Ahbab an Ajnihat al-Righab fi Marifat al-Hisab

"Explanations of the Problems in Arithmetic with Examples"

Commentary by 18th century scholar explains a work by a medieval

mathematician.  This text was used extensively by students.

Although the booktrade has long ceased in Timbuktu, it is the sister city of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, underscoring its book legacy.  This video, The Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu, offers a glimpse of the people, the city, and the manuscripts:

Sayyid Ahad ibn Amar al-Raqadi al-TUmbukti al-Kunti
Shifa' al-Asqam al-Aridah fi al-Zahir wa-el-Batin min al-Ajsam
"Curing Diseases and Defect Both Apparent and Hidden"

For centuries the name Timbuktu has been a metaphor for the exotic.  Now it is a metaphor for ancient learning and the manuscripts thereof.

__________

All images, unless otherwise noted, are from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library, Mali.

__________

__________

Lawrence of Arabia, Postage Stamp Designer

by Stephen J. Gertz

Titlepage (r).

While he was going quietly nutty as a desk jockey in Cairo  attached to Britian's  Egyptian Survey in 1916 during World War I, T.E. Lawrence, not yet the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, worked on a project that became the symbolic first shot fired in the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

He designed and printed postage stamps.

Titlepage (l).

The stamps were collected in a limited edition book in 1918, A Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Mecca & King of the Hejaz. One of the most respected and desirable volumes of philatelic literature, it has become an extremely rare book; no copies have come to auction within the last thirty-five years.

While Lawrence is not overtly named within this slim volume,  E.M. Dowson, British Director-General  of the Survey of Egypt, takes note in the text to “El Emir ‘Awrunis of the Northern Armies of his Highness the King of the Hejaz at whose suggestion this work was undertaken."

Quarter Piastre
Half Piastre
One Piastre

Lawrence and Col. Ronald Storrs did the initial research on design. Of Storrs Lawrence wrote, "The first of all of us was Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary of the Residency, the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East, and subtly efficient, despite his diversion of energy in love of music and letters, of sculpture, painting, of whatever was beautiful in the world's fruit... Storrs was always first, and the great man among us" (Seven Pillars of Wisdom).

T.E. Lawrence.

 In his memoir, Orientations (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1937) Storrs recalled the stamp project:

"Shortly after the Arab Revolution [i.e. when the Arabs declared their independence] we found that its success was being denied or blanketed by Enemy Press .., and we decided that the best proof that it had taken place would be provided by an issue of Hajaz postage stamps, which would carry the Arab propaganda, self-paying and incontrovertible, to the four corners of the earth. Sir Harry  MacMahon [1862-1949], High Commissioner Egypt [1914-1916] was quick to approve, and the Foreign Office approved him. I had corresponded with King Hussein on the project, and he sent me by return of mail a design purporting to typify Islamic architecture, but to the layman indistinguishable from the Eddystone Lighthouse. I felt that this would never do, and wandered around with Lawrence round the Arab  Museum in Cairo collecting suitable motifs in order that the design in wording, spirit and ornament, might be as far as possible representative and reminiscent of a purely Arab source of inspiration. Pictures and views were avoided, for these never formed part of Arab decoration, and are foreign to its art;  so also was European lettering.

"It was quickly apparent that Lawrence already possessed or had immediately assimilated a complete working technique of philatelic and three-color reproduction, so that he was able to supervise the issue from start to finish." 

Endpaper.

The stamps were issued in September of 1916, just prior to Lawrence's assignment to join the Arab revolt  as British military liaison in October of that year. Not only were the stamps beautiful  to the eye, they were, apparently, tasty on the tongue. Lawrence circulated a story, perhaps apocryphal, that he had used a strawberry-flavored glue which created a problem as the Arabs were buying  the stamps simply to lick them.

"These were the first stamps to be produced by the Survey of Egypt and they clearly offered new challenges in their production. In 1918 this achievement was marked by the Survey printing and publishing one of the most attractive items in philatelic literature [our emphasis]. It describes aspects of the production process including paper, watermark, printing inks and cancellations. It continues with some of the associated correspondence with Hejaz and reprinted essays, proofs and color trials on twelve plates. A two page title page decorated in Arabesque designs, has affixed examples of all nine designs of stamps. E.D. Bacon (1860-1938) in a review [The London Philatelist, vol. 28, pp. 271-271, Dec. 1919] says 'The volume is unique in its way, inasmuch as it is, we believe, the first instance of an authentic and carefully prepared history of the production of a set of stamps being compiled and published by  the actual makers thereof'" (Beech, David R. Survey of Egyptian Book 1918, p. 1).

Limitation-Presentation Leaf.

These stamps remain a poignant reminder of a dream lost in highly politicized sand. An assertion of Arab independence and desire to be rid of foreign influence - going postal, if you will, against the Ottomans before actual hostilities broke out - they remain a strong visual symbol of short-lived Arab unity, and of the subsequent betrayal by the British of their promise to respect the aspirations of the Arabs after the war was won.

__________

[LAWRENCE, T.E. (stamp designer and printer); Sir E.M. Dowson (text)]. A Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Mecca & King of the Hejaz. El Quahira [Cairo]: [Survey of Egypt], 1918. First and only edition, limited to 200 numbered copies, this copy being no. 48. Quarto. 22 pp. White boards decorated in green. Decorative endpapers. Twelve plates. Text states "E.M.D./Winter 1917" on p. 22.

The primary philatelic references to Lawrence and these stamps are:

HAWORTH, W.B. and H.l. Sargent. The  Postage Stamps of the Hejaz. London: Junior Philatelic Society, 1922.  64 pp.

BEECH, David R. Hejaz: The First Postage Stamps of 1916 and T.E. Lawrence (The London Philatelist, vol. 114, pp. 323-327, Nov. 2005.

BEECH, David R. Hejaz: The First Postage Stamps of 1916 and T.E. Lawrence: Additional Information (The London Philatelist, vol. 116, pp. 38-40, March 2007.
__________

Images from book courtesy of Peter Harrington. who is currently offering this volume for £6,500 ($10,355). Image of three stamps courtesy of Dropbears.

__________
__________