Travels in Mesopotamia. Including a Journey from Aleppo to Bagdad, by the route of Beer, Orfah, Diarbekr, Mardin, & Mousul; With Researches on the Ruins of Nineveh, Babylon, and Other Ancient Cities.

2 vols. 8vo (144 x 216 mm). XX, 479, (1) pp. IV, 538 pp. With folding engraved map, 2 double-page lithographed plates, and 27 wood-engraved plates. Contemporary half calf over marbled boards. First octavo edition. James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855), founder of the Calcutta Journal, the Oriental Herald and Colonial Review, The Sphynx, and The Argus, social reformer and founder member of the British and Foreign Institute, travelled the Middle East as a sea captain and merchant. This is an account of his travels in 1816 through Asia Minor from Aleppo the Baghdad and includes his researches on the ruins of Babylon, Nineveh, Ctesiphon and Seleucia. "Full of lively descriptions and sympathetic characters" (Blackmer). A quarto edition of this work was published earlier the same year. - Bindings professionally retouched. From the collection of the Iranian-born and American-educated scholar and critic Cyrus Ghani (1929-2015) with his ink inscription to the front free endpaper of volume 1 (acquired at Sotheby Parke Bernet's sale of 29 June 1981, lot 245: 160). Previously in the library of the Scottish collector Anthony MacTier (1773-1854) of Durris near Aberdeen with his signature to both title-pages and his bookplate to both front pastedowns. - Atabey 163. Weber I, 146. Allibone I, 277. Cf. Blackmer 233 (4to ed.). Not in Macro.