TOLSTOY LEV (1828-1910), AUTOGRAPH Cabinet photograph of the writer with a dedication addressed to the Ottoman ruler. 1902.

Lot 668

5 0007 000

Albumen print, on photographer’s mat. Moscow: Photographers Scherer and Nabgolz, print – 13.9x10.2 cm, mat – 16.1x10.7 cm. ‘Mustafa Nuri / Lev Tolstoy / May 26, 1902.’ Presumably, the recipient was the Ottoman ruler Mustafa Nuri Bey (1851-1923), governor of Mosul from June 1902 to September 1905. Tolstoy’s interest in Turkey began in his teenage years, when he studied Arabic and Turkish at Kazan University, and his continued fascination with the intersection of the Russian and Muslim worlds is reflected in his later novel Hadji Murat, written in the late 1890s and early 1900s and published in 1912, after the writer’s death.

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