Ghalib, Isma'il Meskukati Turkmaniye qataloghi. [Catalogue of Turcoman coinage.] Istanbul Mihran Matbaasi 1311 AH (1894 CE)
First edition. 8vo (25 x 17 cm), pp.[xxxii], 183, [1, blank], with printed genealogical tables to text, and 8 photographic plates depicting 75 coins at 1:1 scale. With printed Arabic and Ottoman Turkish text. A very good copy bound in contemporary pebbled cloth, title gilt to upper board and spine. Almost entirely unopened. Final and initial leaves price-clipped. Small scuff to first plate, just touching one coin, light spotting to plates. With contemporary ticket of an Istanbul printer and bookbinder.

The first serious survey of Turcoman coinage, compiled by historian and numismatist Isma'il Ghalib, who systematically described and transcribed more than two hundred coins issued by the Turcoman emirates. These coins demonstrate the stylistic ebb and flow between the Byzantine Empire and the Turcoman emirates, with their mixture of pious Arabic inscriptions and vivid figurative details, ranging from centaurs to turbaned monarchs. Ismai'l Ghalib (1848-1895) was the son of the grand vizier Ibrahim Edhem Pasha and brother of Hamdi Bey, the noted painter and archaeologist who founded the Imperial Museum. Ghalib served in the Ottoman administration, latterly as special assistant to the Governor of Crete from 1894, where he fell ill. He returned to Istanbul, where he died a year later. He is best known as a pioneering numismatist, who, while his brother Hamdi Bey was director of the newly founded Imperial Museum at Istanbul, brought order to the museum's coin collections, developed their holdings, and published several catalogues, "models of meticulous cataloguing and description" in the words of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, which comprise the initial volumes of the series which describe the numismatic holdings of the Imperial Museum. This text was issued in French in the same year.