Arabie

1807 — 8vo. 29 pages. Text is in German. This is a complete monthly issue, containing the above mentioned account. Attractively bound booklet style in recent blue paper covers with label. This issue contains a fascinating compendium on Persia, written during the Russo-Persian War and the brief Franco-Persian alliance. The author draws from and quotes passages of Guillaume-Antoine Olivier's now extremely scarce title, the final volume of which had finally been published the same year in 1807, "Le Voyage dans l'Empire Othoman, l'Égypte et la Perse" [A Journey in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Persia]. An early nineteenth century account covering geography, natural history, commodities such as gold and silver, and social customs from various different ethnic groups. In this text Persians are ascribed attributes such as civilized, rich, polite, and hospitable, at the same time struggling with long-standing inter-racial conflicts between Arabs, Uzbeks, Kurds, Afghans, and Turkmen (Turkoman), the latter of which are described as warlike. Further topics of interest include practices of astrology, medicine, opium usages, and nomadic gypsies. A scarce dissertation and unique item to pair with the collector's volume. Guillaume-Antoine Olivier (1756-1814) was one of the great French naturalists and entomologists, who in 1796, together with physician and zoologist Jean-Guillaume Bruguières, travelled to Persia for six years on a major expedition, and returned to France in 1798 with substantial natural history specimens from Turkey, Asia Minor, Persia (Iran), Egypt, and some Mediterranean islands. His large collection is now mostly at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. These are the original pages printed in 1807, and NOT a reprint. This narrative is from a rare multi-volume geographical and scientific journal titled "Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden", which issued fifty volumes from 1798-1816 and which encompassed critical contemporary topics of geography and astronomy. Adam Christian Gaspari and Franz Xaver von Zach were editors of this important scientific journal.