Babylonian Talmud - Amsterdam, 1752-1765 - Complete Set with Original Leather Bindings

Babylonian Talmud - Amsterdam, 1752-1765 - Complete Set with Original Leather Bindings
Babylonian Talmud, with commentaries. Amsterdam, 1752-1765. Printed by Yosef and Ya'akov sons of Shlomo Proops. Complete 12-volume set.
Some of the letters on the title pages at the beginning of the volumes were printed in red ink.
Ownership inscriptions on title pages: "Belongs to the nagid M. Chaim son of Y.I. [Yitzchak Isaac] Michnevitzer" [from Minsk]. Censor stamps.
This Amsterdam edition was known for its quality and beauty. The Nodah B'Yehuda wrote about this edition: "… the Talmud which the aforementioned printers printed… from the day the printing press was invented, no Babylonian Talmud has been printed with such perfect splendor". This edition was the core of a widespread polemic arising from the printing of another edition of the Talmud in the city of Sulzbach. The Proops brothers waged a war against the Sulzbach printers because the brothers had been granted dozens of approbations by rabbis who endowed them with exclusive printing rights of the Talmud for the following 25 years (many of those approbations were printed at the beginning of the volume of Tracate Berachot of this set). The Proops brothers applied to the Va'ad Arba Aratzot and to other rabbis who hastened to ban the Sulzbach Talmud. They prohibited studying from that printing of the Talmud and ruled that the volumes should be burnt [!] or at least buried. However, this dispute continued for a long while and eventually involved the attention of leading rabbis of that time, such as the Nodah B'Yehuda who finally succeeded in promoting a compromise between the two parties and reaching an agreement in which R. Zalman, the Sulzbach printer acquiesced to recompense the Amsterdam printers.
In the middle of the printing of this edition, the work ceased for several years and during 1758-1763 no tractates were printed. R. Natan Neta Rabinowitz had an interesting conjecture as to the reason for this interval. He thinks that it was caused by the spread of the Sabbatean movement, the spread of the Frankist movement in Podolia and the burning of the Talmud: "Most of the subscribers of the Talmud were from Poland (because in Germany, the Sulzbach edition was less expensive) and at that time, the Sabbatean cult rose in Podolia and vilified the Talmud before the Bishop of Kamenets and Lemberg who subsequently (in Cheshvan 1757) commanded all the priests under his rule to confiscate all Jewish books and to bring them to Kamenets. Thousands of books were seized and burnt in the city streets. These libels and defamations of the Talmud resurfaced year after year and the Jews would conceal their books to save them from confiscation and obviously did not purchase new ones. Moreover, during the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, transporting books into Lithuania was very difficult and therefore the Proops Brothers could not print at that time". Conversely, R.C. Liberman (Ohel Rachel Vol. 1, pp. 377-380) rejected the reasons presented by Rabinowitz and opined that incorrect calculations of printing expenses caused the cessation of printing and after the brothers had spent the initial funds collected from "subscribers", they could not continue their work until new funds were donated by Polish sponsors for completing the printing of the entire Talmud. At the end of the last volume (Tractate Nidah and Seder Taharot), the printers concluded with a text alluding to the events which they experienced: "The same thing that happened to Ezra HaSofer upon building the Second Temple happened to us, advisors schemed to cancel the work of the House of G-d… So people whose hearts are governed by envy, ensnared us along the way… conspired to lock the door before us to prevent us from reaching our goal… Without bountiful Heavenly compassion, we would have not been able to reach the end, because these malevolent plans almost succeeded…".
12 volumes. 39 cm. Some leaves in a few volumes were bound out of order. Overall good condition. Stains and wear in various places. In some volumes, the leaves have a dark hue. Tears to some title pages. Worming in two volumes. Contemporary leather bindings, damaged and worn.