451 14 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 186050 TO HIS HIGHNESS THE KHEDIVE ISMAIL. acquainted with the cordial protection and support Your Highness has always Science, Literature, and Art, as well as to all else that tends to material and [vancement, and being familiar with the fact that it was you, Sir, who gave ilse of Liberalism and Nationalism to my beloved country, I do myself the licating to you this my earliest effort in the direction of a complete record of of Egypt and of the Soudan. I my childhood Your Highness has spared no pains to secure for me the solid lucation afforded in the highest families of Eastern and Western countries. place, you thoughtfully entrusted me to the care of preceptors, professors, tinguished men who almost all belonged to that noble and generous nation oved itself to be the True Forerunner of Civilisation and Liberty-a step › ever appreciated, and especially whilst pursuing my studies at the Royal emy at Woolwich, and afterwards during my long stay in England and association rse phases of her everyday life. object I have in view in the production of this Bibliography is to facilitate of a knowledge of the enormous mass of learning which has been exercised nental Lore, the Ancient Writing and Literature, and the Medieval and Modern at simple but mysterious country whose great antiquity, no less than the future well-being, is to all nations an ever-present wonderment and speculation Sir, whose government was constituted on a solid basis by the undaunted eading ability of your grandfather, and of my august ancestor, the immortal I. And it was by treading in his footsteps that you brought it to such a progress and civilisation: and this your bitterest enemies cannot deny. y humbly hope that Your Highness will deign to accept the Dedication to you ttempt to bring together records of what has been written concerning our Home of our People. the Almighty preserve the precious days for the good of the Country and Members of the illustrious Family to which I am proud to belong. Your Highness' most humble and devoted Son and Servant, ESINA, NAPLES, , 1886. IBRAHIM-HILMY. PREFACE. "THE tongue and the hand of the Apprentice shake in the presence of his master:" thus runs one of our best known Turkish proverbs; and I fail to find another expression better calculated to express the diffidence (or perhaps even the trepidation) with which I present these volumes to the criticism of the public. Its compilation has been one of my chief consolations during five weary years of enforced exile,* passed chiefly on the hospitable shores of England, and tempered by the kindness of English friends. The privilege of serving my country during the hour of her dire distress, in accordance with the timehonoured traditions of my profession, was denied me; † but I declined to look on altogether with folded arms, or to pass my time in the apathy of idleness. In producing this Bibliography of the Literature of Egypt and the Soudan, and in the studies which were essential to my self-imposed task, I have sought to do such a service to my country as would be beyond the reach of political censure. These considerations are the raison d'être of the present work, which, See article in The Fortnightly Review, December 1883. † See correspondence in The Times of August 26, 1882. |