The Garden of Caresses

Golden Cockerel Press

FIRST EDITION, Number XVIII of an edition limited to 275 copies; eight engravings on copper by Gertrude Hermes. Rendered into English by Christopher Sandford. Small 4to; quarter white vellum with blue cloth sides, lettered in gilt on spine; top edge gilt; pp. 91. Cover rubbed and discoloured; top edge cut from front free endpaper; without title page; fox spots; trace of fingering. (Chanticleer 100)

"These poems, written in Spain by an unknown Moor of the tenth century, have been discovered at Timbuctoo in the archives of the ancient University of Sankore. In the fifteenth century, before the ravages of the Touaregs, Timbuctoo was still the most important intellectual and commercial centre of Islam. When the Arabs were driven out of Spain, a large number of scholars, attracted by the fame of Timbuctoo, reached that town after a sojourn in Morocco. To-day Timbuctoo is ruined and desolate. Of the famous University of Sankore there remains only the mosque, kept by a priest who jealously guards a few piles of dull volumes. One evening, when we were there, the old man took from a great leather sack a casket which was stuffed with deeds of transfer, judgments of the Kadi, and verses from the Koran. But at length he drew out a parchment on which were inscribed in pure Arabic under an illuminated title, these kacidas, which he allowed us to transcribe, and which are here literally translated."