Map of Western Asia.

London: Edward Stanford,, 1878. First edition of this detailed map of the Middle East, centred on Iran and including the Arabian Gulf and the holy cities of Arabia, and extending to the Caucasus and Central Asia in the north, Anatolia, the Levant and the Red Sea in the west, and Sindh and Afghanistan in the west; rare, with three copies only traced in libraries (British Library, National Library of Scotland, and the University of British Columbia); WorldCat traces two copies of a second edition, published in 1885 (Library of Congress and Berkeley). This map contains a number of notable features. The Hajj route to Baghdad is clearly labelled, as are main land routes across the entire region, as well as the Persian Gulf Submarine Telegraph Cable, which was laid in 1864 to connect Karachi and Basra; the extension to Europe was completed in 1865, though the cable was in fact on its way to obsolescence at the time of publication, following the laying of another cable from Aden to Bombay in 1870. The depiction of a dense network of routes criss-crossing northern Arabia reflects the substantial improvements in British knowledge of the region throughout the 19th century. "Because Europeans did not travel them, the old incense trails and the well-worn pilgrimage routes to the Holy Cities - frequently one and the same - were often neglected [in pre-19th century maps of Arabia]. It was not until the early 19th century that European acquaintance with the Arabian interior became sufficient to allow cartographers to plot these longstanding routes with confidence... By the mid-19th century, there was an upsurge in the accuracy of map data, as the fruits of scientific enquiry helped provide the missing pieces of the global jigsaw puzzle. In Arabia, much of this progress hinged on the discoveries of other explorers such as Johann Burckhardt, William Palgrave, Richard Burton and Charles Doughty" (Parry, "Mapping Arabia", in Aramco World, online). The findings of these adventures were supplemented increasingly by official surveys, encouraged partly by rivalry between the British, Russian and Ottoman empires, and probably also by the role of the yearly pilgrimage in a series of recent cholera epidemics, which had spread to Europe and North America, and which worsened from 1866, when steam ships took pilgrims from Egypt and India for the first time, this much quicker form of transport accelerating the global spread of disease. Lithographic map coloured in outline, dissected into 18 panels and mounted on linen, opening to 462 x 640 mm, folding into the original pink cloth case with printed yellow paper label to front board as issued, yellow-surface paper advertisement leaves to front board and upper outer panel verso; scale of 1 inch : 100 miles (approx. 1 : 6,336,000). Contemporary bookseller's ticket of Chancellor, Shrewsbury. Case slightly sunned and rubbed, light fraying to spine, a few very faint spots. Very good.