Feb 25, 2021 - Sale 2559

Sale 2559 - Lot 241

Price Realized: $ 2,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
IQBAL, SIR MOHAMMED. Poet of the East and Chughtai. Text in Urdu and English. Introduction by S.A. Rahman. With 37 tipped-in plates by Abdur Rahman Chughtai, and numerous calligraphic and ornamental illustrations, many in color, illustrating the works of Muhammed Iqbal. Folio, publisher's gilt-stamped brown roan, some discoloration and horizontally lined fading to covers, bottom corners bumped, yellow top-stain; pictorial dust jacket, spine panel shows faint fade, minor creasing to portion of bottom edges; hinges firm, contents clean but for a few smudges to endpapers and a few soft creases; original cloth slipcase with printed paper pictorial onlays laid down to spine and panels, small abrasions and moderate soiling. (Lahore): (Nisar Art Press), [1968]

Additional Details

First edition, regular issue, signed by General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, President of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988. Bearing presentation inscription (in secretarial hand) "With my very best wishes to Mr. T[homas]. J[an]. Bata" and below, the President's signature, followed by "General / 22 October 1986" also in his hand.

There was also issued a signed limited edition of 275 printed on vellum. We have located a few other presentation copies that have appeared on the market signed by Zia as President to dignitaries around the same time as this including a copy inscribed to American Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and another the following year to Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra, with both of these copies appearing to be the regular issue, as here. Thomas J. Bata was the son of the founder of the multi-national Bata Shoe Company, certainly the most ubiquitous post-war footwear brand in the whole of South Asia. This copy sourced from the Bata Shoe Museum.