[Mesopotamia / Nineveh / Iraq] – Luke, Harry Charles.

Mosul And Its Minorities [Harry Luke’s personal working copy, identifying it as such also on the endpaper / Manuscript annotations and markings on many pages with corrections and additions, possibly for a second edition].

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. London, Martin Hopkinson & Co., Ltd., 1925. 22,5 cm x 15 cm. IX, 161 pages, 16 illustrations on Plates and three (3) small maps printed within the text. Hardcover / Original publisher’s cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Poor condition of the binding. Spine cracked, almost detached. A few loosely inserted plates. Otherwise in fair condition. From the personal collection of Sir Harry Luke.

From the Preface:

″A Journey in the Near and Middle East, begun in the autumn of 1907 in the company of my friend Mr.Harry Pirie-Gordon and designed to be prolonged to Urfa, Mardin and Mosul, was forcibly curtailed in the spring of 1908, after we had crossed the Euphrates at Tell Ahmar, by Ibrahim Pasha, the chief of the Milli Kurds…..It was not until 1924 that circumstances enabled me to complete, by a visit to the Province of Mosul made from Jerusalem, the voyage thus interrupted sixteen years previously. Since those days Mosul has acquired a new importance in the eyes of the world and of this revived interest in its affairs the “Minorities of Mosul” may well bespeak a share.

The aim of this little book, written in the scanty leisure of a busy official life, is to help make these singularly interesting peoples better known to English Readers, and to win for them, if possible, some additional measure of sympathy in the difficult times through which they are passing.

Several of the chapters that follow have appeared in ‘The Times’; and I have to thank the editor of that journal for his kindness in allowing me to reproduce here those which have enjoyed the hospitality of his columns, together with the maps, with which they were illustrated. Most of the illustrations of the book are taken from my own photographs; but I would express to Mr.Humphrey Bowman, C.B.E., formerly Director of Education in Iraq and now holding the same office in Palestine, my thanks for allowing me to use the sketches of Melek Taus, kindly made by Mrs.Arthur Bowman for reproduction here from two unique photographs in his possession. I have to thank Mr.Jerome Farrell, M.C., who accompanied my wife and myself on this journey, for the photograph of Rabban Hormizd, as well as for much valuable information; and Canon H.Danby for the loan of the block reproduced on page 84.Finally, I must record my gratitude to Mr.H.I.Lloyd, O.B.E., M.C., Administrative Inspector of the Province and to Mrs. Lloyd, for the hospitality they were so good as to extend to us in their charming Mosul house, delightful with its colonnaded court and with its view across the Tigris to the mounds of Nineveh and the tomb of the Prophet Jonah. – H.C.L. – Easter, 1925.″

Contents:

I. The Way Thither

[″Palestine and Syria, bounded on the west by the blue waters of the Mediterranean, on the east by the grey and stony sea of the great Syrian desert, have been likened to a peninsula, narrow and mountanous as is Italy. And indeed this comparison is more than mere fancy. For as truly as Jaffa and Haifa, Beirut and Tripoli are the Amalfi and Naples, the Leghorn and Genoa of this Italy of the Near east, so are Damascus and Homs, Hama and Aleppo its Bari and Ancona, its Rimini and Venice.
The first stage of our journey to Mosul lay along the high ridge, the backboneof this peninsula, from Jerusalem to Nazareth ; the next along the western coast, from Haifa to Beirut. Of Beirut all that need be said is that it is a Levantine Marseilles…..”]

II. Mosul : The Living City
III. Mosul : The Dead City
IV. The Separation of the Churches
V. The Nestorians : The First Stage
VI. Prester John
VII. The People of Mar Shimun
VIII. Monasteries of the Monophysites
IX. The Worshippers of Satan
X. The Return Journey

Illustrations include on page 8 a photograph of the travelling party’s two cars in the middle of the desert.

Other illustrations nclude for example:

Images of Melek Taus / The Mosque of Nebi Shit / A Hanging in Mosul [very graphic] / Mar Emmanuel II (Patriarch of Baylon) / Mar Ignatius Elias III. [Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch] / Assyrian Gateway, Nimrud / Rabban Hormizd / Jacobite Monk of Deir Mattai / Tomb of Mar Behnam / Syrian Catholic Monks of Mar Ahnam / Girls’ school, Tell Keif / The Mir of the Yezidis [Ba Idri : Court and Haremlik] / The Serpent, Sheik ‘Adi [Temple of the Sun, Sheikh ‘Adi] / Tomb of Sheikh Ma’ruf, Baghdad [Reputed Tomb of Wife of Harun al-Rashid, Baghdad] / Yezidi Worshipping Melek Taus / The golden Domes of Kadhimein [Palmyra and the village of Tadmor] //

• Keywords: British Colonial Administration · British Colonial History · British Foreign Office · British Foreign Policy · Harry Luke – Mesopotamia (1924 – 1925) · Harry Luke Collection – Mesopotamia / Nineveh / Iraq · Iraq · Mesopotamia · Mesopotamia / Manuscript Annotations · Mesopotamia Content / Sir Harry Luke Collection · Nineveh · Sir Harry Luke · Sir Harry Luke – Personal Archive of Books and Correspondence · Sir Harry Luke Collection
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 30163AB

EUR 275.000,--