Antique Plan of the City of Mosul on the Tigris, 1780

An original antique copper engraving, published in 1780, with a plan of Mosul and the country across the river. The caption engraved in the lower margin reads Grondtekening der Stad Mosul. in Dutch and Plan de la Ville de Mosul. in French, both meaning "Plan of the City of Mosul".

The town fills the lower two thirds of the sheet inside a wall with round towers, its streets and blocks drawn as a close network with a compass rose at the center. Part of the ground inside the walls at the left is left open. Numbers key the gates and buildings. The river, lettered Tiger Fl., crosses the sheet above the town from left to right, with arrows giving the direction of flow, a small fortified building on the near bank and a bridge leading across. On the far side the open ground is lettered NINIVE, with Kalla Nunia lettered among the hills beyond it and Nunia beside a small walled building at the upper right. A scale at the bottom is lettered pas Geometriq.

The plate number Tab: XLVI. is engraved at the upper right. No artist's or engraver's name is lettered on this sheet.

This sheet belongs to volume two of Niebuhr's Voyage en Arabie, translated from the German (Traduit de l'Allemand) and published at Amsterdam by S. J. Baalde and at Utrecht by Barthelemy Wild in 1780. Carsten Niebuhr (1733 to 1815), a German born surveyor in Danish service, was the only member of the Danish expedition to Arabia (1761 to 1767) to return alive. The expedition's artist, Georg Wilhelm Baurenfeind, died at sea in 1763.

Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Marked handling soiling along the bottom and right edges. Foxing over much of the margin. A loss at the bottom right corner, outside the printed area. Several larger brown marks.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.