RABADAN, Mahomet. Mahometism fully explained: containing, I. The previous Disposition to, and the Method of, the Creation: The Fall of Adam and Eve; Their Repentance and Sufferings; Their Posterity down to Noah. With a particular Description of the Deluge. II. The Wonderful Life of Abraham, and the Distinction between the Two Lines, that of Isaac, Father of the Jews, and of Ishmael, Father of the Arabs. III. An Historical and Chronological Dissertation concerning the Miraculous Prophetick Light, which shone on the Forehead of Mahomet, and all his Progenitors. IV. The lives of Hashem, Abdolmutalib, and Abdallah, the Three immediate Predecessors of Mahomet; With his own Life, Pilgrimage to Heaven, Death, &c. The Prayers, Ceremonies, Fasts, Festivals, and other Rites observed by the Mahometans. With a Remarkable Description of the Day of Judgment. Written in Spanish and Arabick, in the Year M.DC.III. for the Instruction of the Moriscoes in Spain. By Mahomet Rabadan, an Arragonian Moor. Translated from the Original Manuscript, and Illustrated with large Explanatory Notes. By Mr. Morgan [volume II]: Mahometism explained. Vol.II. Containing, I. A Continuation of the Life of Abdallah, … II. A most remarkable Account of the Terrors of the Last Day: … And, for a farther Illustration, there is subjoined , An ample and genuine Account of the unjust Persecution, and final Expulsion of the Spanish Moors; chiefly collected from the Mouths and Books of those People. The Whole being interspersed with many useful Annotations. London: printed for W. Mears, at the Lamb, without Temple-Bar [volume II]: printed for the author. 1723-1725.
Two volumes, 8vo. Contemporary English panelled calf, spines with raised bands, numbered directly in gilt, morocco lettering-pieces; pp. xxvi, [6], 390; xvi, lxxxiv, 366, [2, Advertisement], (volume one with cancel title, with slightly different imprint), two folding engraved plates, folding genealogical table; title-page with old repair on verso of volume I, minimal traces of marginal worming to the initial few leaves of this volume; extremities with restorations and one defective lettering piece; otherwise a very good set with contemporary ownership inscriptions Dawson Watson at head of title-pages, later bookplates of James S. Dearden of Rampside inside front covers.
Very rare first edition of one of the first Western books to counter Islamophobia, a prose translation of edificatory religious poetry written in Aljamiado Spanish (Spanish written in Arabic script) by a Spanish Muslim in North African exile in order to support the prosecuted Muslims and crypto-Muslims in Spain. This contains as well the first Muslim biography of the Prophet in English.
The little there is known about the translator Joseph Morgan is that he was connected to Masonic circles in Britian, spent several years in the early 18th century in the Maghreb, was chancellor to the British Consul at Algiers before moving to Tunis in 1719 and returning to England the following year. In North Africa he had accquired a manuscript, written in 1603, as basis for this edition, which is in volume one dedicated to Robert Harley, Count of Oxford. He received the manuscript from Morgan. It was later transferred to the British Museum, and exisists today as Harley 7501 in the British Library. After the death of the translator of the Qur'an, George Sale (who was accused of being too sympathetic towards Islam) Joseph Morgan finished and edited his The Lives and Memorable Actions of
many Illustrious Persons of the Eastern Nations.
Rabadán’s
manuscript was later transferred to the library of Robert Harley,
Count of Oxford, and then to the British Museum. It exists today
as Harley 7501 in the British Library.
Illustrate I, p. 217 and 28
ESTC T172321 (volume I on its own, with slightly different imprint) and T92870 (both volumes together)
SKU: 2124046