OTTOMAN TURKEY, DATED 1856 AD

The Waqwaq island is a remote island which according to some accounts Alexander the Great reached at the end of on his epic travels. On the island grows the Talking Tree, the fruits of which bear human faces. This is a popular theme of mythical medieval literature, see for instance an illustration to a 15th century Arabic manuscript, Kitab al-Bulhan, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Bodl. Or. 133). The present work is very probably a translation into Arabic, possibly from a Persian or European text, by a European scholar.