169 - Prideaux, (H.).

Prideaux, (H.). The Life of Muhammad, in Which the Truth of the Deception Is Fully Revealed. Enriched with engraved illustrations. (Translated by Daniel Larroque). Amsterdam, George Gallet, 1698. Small 8° (15 x 10 cm). [3] leaves, 164 pp., [2] leaves with title page engraved in red and black. Frontispiece and 9 copperplate plates in the style of Romeyn de Hooghe. Contemporary calfskin binding with gold-stamped spine label and floral gilding on the spine. Brunet, VI, 28001. Chahine, Bibliographie du Levant 3859. — First French edition. The original British edition was published in 1697. - “The Life of Mahomet was in fact printed as a polemical tract against the deists. As a biography, it is valueless from the standpoint of modern knowledge. Some of its errors were noted by Sale in the discourse and notes to his translation of the Koran in 1734. Prideaux had considered writing a history of the Saracen Empire but instead turned to the period between the Old and New Testaments as the subject of his next historical work” (Dict. of Nat. Biogr. XLV, 352). - The British theologian and Orientalist Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724) draws upon the studies of the eminent Orientalist and biblical scholar Edward Pococke (1604–1691), who possessed a collection of over 400 Oriental manuscripts. - Stamp on the endpaper; a very fine, clean, and decoratively bound copy.