The Government, and Policy, Religion, Customs, and Way of Living of the Turks, in General. Faithfully related From a Serious Observation, Taken in Many Years Travels thro’ those Countries.

By Hill, Aaron

London: for the author and to be sold by John Mayo …, 1709, First Edition. Folio –– 35.5 cm. [xxviii], 339 pp. Period style sprinkled calf with de-bossed stamped panel boards, spine in six gilt decorated compartments with gilt-lettered red-oxide morocco label to second, page-edges wavy and uncut.. Engraved portrait frontispiece and 7 plates each with facing explanatory leaf, Errata at contents page, pages clean with no prior ownership markings. An excellent copy of the Very Scarce first edition.

Aaron Hill was 15 when he visited his distant relative Lord Paget, English ambassador to Constantinople. From Turkey he travelled to Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Arabia before returning to England three years later in April 1703 with Paget. “Hill’s Ottoman Empire was a luxury publication designed to establish its author’s social and literary credentials at nearly 350 pages it was an impressive achievement for a 24-year-old. Hill’s primary model was the diplomat Sir Paul Rycaut’s Present State of the Ottoman Empire of 1668. He borrows many of Rycaut’s observations on the political, institutional, and religious history of the Turks yet he is undoubtedly more interested in projecting himself into the picture as an adventure hero Hill dramatizes himself struggling with knife-wielding Arabs, finally stabbing one to death, going underwater pearl-diving, braving storms and dangerous tempests on his sea journey to Samon and, finally, enduring ‘A Strange Accident which befel the Author in a Vault among the Mummys'” –Gerrard. Aaron Hill: The Muses’ Projector, 1685-1750, p.22. Atabey 580; not in Burrell.

$2000.00 -