The True History of Cara Mustapha,

First English edition. One of several novels by the French writer Jean de Préchac (d.1720) based on real historical figures. Kara Mustafa Pasha (d.1683) was the Grand Vizier who commanded the Turkish army at the siege of Vienna in 1683. His defeat at the hands of the Holy League cost him his life. The engraved frontispiece depicts Mustafa's execution by strangulation on the orders of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV.

'That Plate which you see at the beginning of the Book, may instruct you with the sad manner, and fatal Ceremonies of his death; whilst he was reading the Grand Seignor's warrant for his Execution, one of the two Agas, who had been trusted with that cruel Commission, set down before him a rich embroidered cushion to kneel upon, and make his last Prayer, and the other at the same time put a silk Rope about his Neck, and Strangled him; without allowing him liberty to speak a word, after he had ended his Prayer' (To the Reader).

One of three editions printed the same year. ESTC records eight copies, four in the British Isles (BL, Cambridge University Library, Magdalen College Oxford, and the Bodleian) and four in North American (Huntington, Newberry Library, University of California, and Yale).

First English edition; 12mo (15 x 8.5 cm); engraved frontispiece, without initial and final blanks, first and last few leaves toned at extremities, contemporary speckled sheep, lightly rubbed, head of spine worn; [10], 139, [1]pp.

ESTC R25822; Wing P3209; Atabey 996.