Inscripciones Arabes de Granada, precedidas de una reseña histórica y de la genealogía detallada de los reyes Alahmares.Madrid, Imprenta Nacional, 1859 (issued 1860). 4to. With a folding family tree. Near contemporary gold-tooled vellum with spine title, endpapers with a floral pattern. With the original publisher’s 1860 front wrapper bound in.

XIII, [1], 15-242, [2] pp.The first (and only early) edition of this detailed study of Arabic inscriptions found in Granada, with the texts of the inscriptions set in naskh Arabic type and also translated into Spanish. It includes many poems, notably those of Ibn Zamrak (1333-93), as well as Lafuente’s overview of the history and genealogy of the Moorish Nasrid dynasty (1230-1492) that ruled the Emirate of Granada, the last Islamic realm in Spain. Emilio Lafuente y Alcantara (1825-68), a disciple of Don Pascual de Gayangos and José Moreno Nieto, includes much information from documents he had newly discovered himself. He was "gifted with great erudition and love of scholarship" and condemned Mediaeval Christian intolerance of Islam, the destruction of Arabic manuscripts during the Inquisition and the damage done to the Alhambra by rebuilding under Charles V. In his present first major publication, Lafuente attempts to document surviving Arabic inscriptions in Spain before anyone could destroy or incompetently restore them. This quickly established him as one of the leading oriental scholars of the Iberian peninsula, but his work was cut short by his premature death nine years later.Near contemporary handwritten English annotations in ink and pencil to p. 169, correcting Lafuente’s claim that a large vase had disappeared from the Alhambra and probably is to be found "ornamenting the cabinet of some Englishman, passionate for our things": "This is a mistake entirely. The great 2nd jar is in the Museum at Madrid ...". Boards slightly warped, paper evenly browned throughout, slightly foxed in places.l Abascal/Cebrián, Manuscritos sobre antigüedades de la Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid 2005, 309; Dodds, Al-Andalus, 404; Harrassowitz, Arabien und der Islam 1932, 2414 ("rare"); James T. Monroe, Islam and the Arabs in Spanish scholarship (1970), pp. 119-122; Palau 129800; Petzholdt, Neuer Anzeiger für Bibliographie und Bibliothekswissenschaft 1862,140.