Fonds SC54 - The Narrative of Taleb Sidi Ibrahim be Muhammed in Berber, Arabic and English

The exact date when the manuscripts entered the Society's collections is unknown. It is probable that Hodgson donated them to the Society when he was in London in 1836. A footnote in the Journal for 1837 states that all three manuscripts were in the Society's possession. They were bound together by the Society into a volume with half calf binding and marbled boards.

'The personal narrative of the Taleb Sidi Ibrahim be Muhammed el-Messi, of the province of Sus; including some Statistic and Political Notices of the extreme south-west country of Morocco'. The Berber manuscript was commissioned by William Brown Hodgson (1801-1871), US State representative to North African Barbary States, who had it translated into Arabic. From the Arabic translation he made an English translation. All three are bound within the book with an introduction by Hodgson, concerning the commissioning of the manuscript, which he believed was the third manuscript to be written in Berber. The introduction is dated 1 March 1835.

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