The very scarce first edition of this groundbreaking work on Circassian linguistics.
The author, Dr. Louis Loewe (1809-1888), was a Jewish philologist born in Prussian Silesia. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin, he travelled to London in order to seek further learning. There he became acquainted with the Duke of Sussex and Admiral Sydney Smith, and with their patronage he undertook a three year tour of Central Asia and the Middle East, where he acquired a deeper understanding of such languages as Arabic, Coptic, Nubian, Turkish and Circassian. Whilst conducting research at the Vatican Library, he met the great Jewish financier and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, who engaged him as his secretary for a trip to Palestine. Sir Moses found Dr. Loewe’s extraordinary polyglot skills to be invaluable, and thus began a lifelong relationship of patronage, travel and companionship. Dr. Loewe became a naturalised British citizen in 1862.
It is notable that of the many languages which Dr. Loewe studied, this English - Circassian -Turkish dictionary is the only such grammar which he published. It was perhaps the challenge of mastering this largely undocumented language which attracted the great philologist. As he says in the preface: “The Circassian language is considered one of the most difficult in the world; it differs both in the nature of the words and the syntactical constructions from all other Caucasian languages. More than this, the pronunciation is so difficult, that even the most distinguished linguists find it hard to imitate the sound of a syllable as uttered by the mouth of the Addee-ghey people.” In order to address this difficulty of pronunciation there is a complex table included in this volume which explains the alphabet which Loewe has adapted to express the Circassian language, drawing from Arabic, Persian and Turkish. There are also Roman phonetics spelled out beside each Circassian word.
There is some confusion over the publication history of the present dictionary, which was first issued in two different contexts in 1854, presumably simultaneously. Often sited as the appendix to Vol 6 of the Proceedings of the Philological Society, there is a statement on the half-title of that publication which elucidates the circumstances under which it was also issued as an independent work, distributed by the author. That statement reads: “The first part of the following Dictionary by Dr. Loewe was laid before the council by one of its Members at its meeting of the 11th of March 1853, with a recommendation from the Member that the Society should undertake the expense of printing the materials collected by Dr. Loewe, inasmuch as there was no proper Dictionary of the Circassian Language, and one would be of great service to our Officers in the War with Russia, as we should certainly have to act with Schamyl and the Circassian tribes. On this recommendation the council resolved to act, and accordingly printed the first part of the Dictionary - the English, Circassian, Turkish, - and the Introduction &c. to the whole, allowing Dr. Loewe to have additional copies from their type printed at his own cost. Dr. Loewe subsequently resolved to print the second part of the Dictionary - the Circassian, English, Turkish - for his own use, and he then allowed the Society to have copies of this second part printed from his type at their cost.” [Emphasis mine]. As such, there is no distinction in the sheets between those copies bound up with the Proceedings of the Philological Society and those distributed by Dr. Loewe. The fact that this copy does not have the half-title reserved exclusively for the Philological Society copies would indicate that it is one of the latter. Another such copy without half-title was presented by Dr. Loewe to Hans Sloane.
In either format, this book is scarce. A set of the Proceedings which may or may not have included the Appendix came up at Sotheby’s in 1982. Rare Book Hub finds a copy of the Dictionary in a Francis Edwards catalogue of 1963. The only other copy traced was in a 1906 Anderson Gallery sale.
