Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Inscribed to an Ottoman governor. 1902
Cabinet photograph signed ('Lev Tolstoy') and inscribed to Mustafa Nuri, n.p., 26 March 1902.

Image by Scherer et Nabholz, Moscow, 139 x 102mm, mount 161 x 107mm. Inscribed in Russian on mount. Provenance: RR Auction, 18 May 2005, lot 882.

Inscribed to an Ottoman governor. The recipient is perhaps the Ottoman administrator Mustafa Nuri Bey (1851-1923), governor of Mosul from June 1902 to September 1905. Tolstoy's interest in Turkey dated back to his teens, when he studied Arabic and Turkish at Kazan University, whilst his abiding preoccupation in intersections between the Russian and Muslim world is reflected in his late novella, Hadji Murat (1912).

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