[AUSTRIAN MINERALOGIST IN THE OTTOMAN LAND] Ilmü'l-arz ve'l-maâdin. [i.e. Geology and mineralogy]. Translated by Ibrahim Lütfü

DR. ABDULLAH BEY (KARL or, CARL EDUARD HAMMERSCHMIDT), (Austrian mineralogist, entomologist, and physician), (1800-1874)., Constantinople (Istanbul), Mekteb-i Tibbiye-i Sâhâne Matbaasi., [AH 1292] = 1875.

Contemporary quarter cloth bdg. Rebacked. Marbled boards. Demy 8vo. (21 x 14 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). [2], 582 p., 128 numerous b/w ills. on 33 plates (two folded), many tables. 

Very scarce first and only edition of this one of the earliest modern geology, mineralogy book in the literature of Ottoman natural science, written by the Austrian scientist Hammerschmidt, who was the founder of the first natural science museum established as part of the Tibbiye-i Askeriye-i Sahane [i.e. The Royal Military Medical School located in Marmara University's Haydarpasa Campus], and the Kizilay [i.e. The Red Crescent] in the Ottoman Empire.

This richly illustrated book with the b/w examples of schists, minerals, fossils, et alli. is the first comprehensive book in its field.

Karl Eduard Hammerschmidt, also known as Abdullah Bey was an Austrian mineralogist, entomologist, and physician. Hammerschmidt took a law degree in Vienna in 1827. He also studied medicine, with an emphasis on anesthesiology, and served until 1848 as the editor of the Landwirtschaftliche Zeitung, an agricultural newspaper published in Vienna. After the Revolution of 1848, Hammerschmidt fled Vienna to fight under the Polish general Józef Bem. Along with other revolutionaries from Hungary, he entered Turkey, and soon thereafter was employed as a teacher of medicine, zoology, and mineralogy in the medical school of Constantinople. Austria demanded that Turkey deport him, whereupon Hammerschmidt moved to Damascus, where he worked as a hospital physician. He served in the Turkish army during the Crimean War. In 1873, Hammerschmidt joined the faculty of medicine in Istanbul, teaching geology, mineralogy, and zoology. He founded the Natural History Museum of the Imperial Medical School of Constantinople and was among the founders of the Turkish Red Crescent. Hammerschmidt converted to Islam and assumed the name "Abdullah Bey." He died in 1874 in the course of geological surveys for a new railway in Anatolia.

In his lifetime Dr. Abdullah Bey sent 400 fossils from Anatolia to Paris. Some of those fossils are still on display in Paris.

Özege 9044, TBTK 172.