[TATAR PUBLISHING IN JAPAN / ARABIC] Haftîn sharîf. [i.e. The seven almighties]

Comp. by ABDULQAYYUM B. ABDULBEDI', Matbaa-yi Islâmiye [i.e. Islam Printinghouse], Tokyo, 1931.

In attractive original black cloth, title and printing house and place lettered gilt on front board as well as on the spine. Lithograph. 12mo. (16 x 11 cm). Text in Arabic and bilingual imprint details in Japanese and Tatar. 173, [2] p. All edges gilt.

First edition of this extremely rare and early litho Tokyo imprint of seven compiled and annotated Quran surahs in Arabic printed by Tatar exiles in Japan. According to the imprint details in Japanese and Tatar with Arabic letters, it was printed in 1931 in Tokyo, Matbaa-i Islamiye [i.e. Islamic Printinghouse] by photographing each page from the copy published in Kazan in 1897 [AH 1313], compiled, corrected, and annotated by Abd al-Qayyum bin Abd al-Bedi'.

In the early 20th century, groups of Tatars immigrated from Kazan, Russia, to Japan. The community became led by the Bashkir émigré imam Muhammed-Gabdulkhay Kurbangaliev, who had fought on the side of the White movement in the Russian Civil War, and arrived in Japan in 1924; he then set up an organization to bring together the Tatars living in Tokyo. Tatars in Japan founded their first mosque and school in 1935 in Kobe, and another in Tokyo in 1938, with support from Kurbangaliev's organization. Another Tatar organization, the Mohammedan Printing Office in Tokyo, printed the first Qur'an in Japan as well as a Tatar-language magazine in Arabic script, the Japan Intelligencer; it continued publication until the 1940s. Most of the Tatars emigrated after World War II. Those remaining took up Turkish citizenship in the 1950s.

Not in OCLC.