[FIRST GUIDE TO TURKISH DRIVERS / AUTOMOBILE / DRIVING LICENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST] Soför muallimi: Otomobil ve makinist mektebi müessesi ve müdebbîri [i.e., Teacher of driving]

TEVFIK, FIKRI.

Fikri Tevfik [Kardes] Otomobil ve Makinist Mektebi / Hüsnü Tabiat Matbaasi, Istanbul, 1928.

Original pictorial wrappers in colour. Large demy 8vo. (22 x 15 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). [4], 248, 7, [16] p., 144 numbered ills. in reproduced cliches, lithographs and letterpress. 

The very rare first and only edition of the first Turkish book on automobile driving. This earliest example of its kind including a very attractive cover design in colour with the logo of the first Automobile Association on the rear cover. The composition depicts a period car illuminating this logo by headlights, and a Turkish town and mountains in an impressive landscape behind it. It’s published as the third (and the last) book of the Driver’s Library Series. 

This attractive book teaches driving in twenty lessons, especially for the candidates of the earliest driving licenses in Turkey, written by Fikri Tevfik, a founding member of the first Turkish automobile association and a driving teacher. 

A seven-page pamphlet was added to the end of the book titled “Fikri Tevfik Otomobil ve Makinist Mektebi [i.e., Fikri Tevfik Automobile and Machinist School]. This rare pamphlet includes the history of this corporation, the history of automobiles in the world, and motor vehicles in the Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey. The book with the pamphlet was seen only once with this pamphlet inside. The copy in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek includes it for certain according to the OCLC.

After the automobile came to the Ottoman Empire and then to the New Republic of Turkey, many drivers had to be trained. The Fikri Tevfik Automobile and Machinist School was established to practically accept and apply the useful information followed by the driver schools in Europe, founded by Fikri Tevfik behind the stadium in Taksim, Pera. This school continued its activities until the early 1940s. 

Özege 19045.; TBTK 10915.; As of May 2024, OCLC locates four paper copies (458300133, 949475760, 929900325), two holdings in North American libraries (UCLA x2).