Description

8°. 212 pp., later (ca 1900?) ottoman binding with black cloth boards and calf spine with gilt lettering, patterned endpapers, old bookseller’s label on the front pastedowns (slightly stained and water-stained in margins, last pages with small worm holes in white margins and one hole through the outer edge of the text, one page with a small tear in the inner upper part, binding slightly scuffed around the spine). 

 
The book in Ottoman language, printed in the early period of the press in Bulaq, today a part of Cairo, is an entertaining 14. Century Persian story on a woman and her parrot.  

As a husband of the woman leaves for a business trip and the wife decides to use his absence for meeting other men, one of the birds, living in the house, tries to warn the wife against it. Disagreeing with its words, the wife strangles the bird. The much smarter parrot choses a different way to keep the wife from leaving the house. Every evening it starts telling her a different entertaining story until the husband returns 52 nights later. The book Tutinama, which was a popular reading text in the Middle East, is a collection of the parrot’s tales. 

Worldcat lists one example of a version from 1253 (Marburg University Library, OCLC 643110537), but no examples of this edition.