Beschreibung:

[QUR'AN]. Talismanic brass engravings in the type 'hand of Fatima' incorporating Qur'an citations and prayers. [N.p.: early 19th-century]. A remarkable and suggestive survival: a striking sheet with talismanic and amuletic symbols, the 'hand of Fatima' and Qur'an quotes, once affixed on, then torn from, the walls of the Mosque of St. Sophia at the taking of the Castle of the Morea, in October 1828. Plates like the ones engraved here, often shaped in the form of the ‘hand of Fatima’, were commonly used in the Middle East to create talismanic shirts and textiles, and also to illustrate paper which would then be displayed or carried for protection. They include prayer, Qur’anic abstracts and mathematical formulas and diagrams which relate to abjad. This sheet was taken and preserved by the then young officer William Fordyce Blair. ‘Morea expedition’ describes the land intervention of the French Army in the Peloponnese (or, by its medieval name, Morea) between 1828 and 1833, during the Greek War of Independence. The Castle of the Morea, by October 1828 the only bastion still under the Turks, guarded the entry to the Gulf of Corinth. France began a siege of the fortress from the sea, with reinforcements arriving on October 26 - the British HMS Blonde, under Captain Edmund Lyons and with young William Fordyce Blair, added her cannons. On October 30, after some action and loss of life on both sides, the Turks evacuated the garrison. William Fordyce Blair, son of the 24th Laird, had been sent join the Royal Naval at 14, eventually rising to the rank of Captain. He had seen action at the Battle of Navarino, 1827, and upon the taking of Morea Castle, he was mentioned in dispatches for his gallantry. He enjoyed a successful and prosperous career, and went on to become a keen collector. Upon inheriting Blair in 1841, he began expanding the house collections, and supporting and endowing the local community. Several objects from Blair were sold at auction in 2012. [Offered with:] McLEOD, John. Voyage of His Majesty ’ s ship Alceste to China, Corea and the Island of Lewchew . London: Murray, 1819. Third edition, William Fordyce Blair’s copy. Contemporary beige morocco gilt (spine chipped, extremities worn). Presentation inscription from Capt. Murray Maxwell (Captain of the Alceste ) to Colonel Blair, dated 1819; ownership inscription of William Fordyce Blair dated 1842 and a few lines of marginalia by him dated up to 1869. Single sheet (600 x 420mm), brass engraved talismanic symbols incorporating white-on-black quotations and phrases, surrounding a brass-engraved centrepiece portraying the elements of a temple (tears and wear to the edges affecting the extremities of the outer woodcuts, a few small holes as a result o creases where once folded, with mostly minor losses to the woodcuts). Pasted on a contemporary marbled board, once a binding, preserving a fly-leaf protecting the sheet (extremities rubbed). Provenance : William Fordyce Blair (25th Laird, 1805-1888, his ownership inscription and note in the margins).