French relations with the Islamic world in the seventeenth century
Voyage ou relation de l'etat present du Royaume de Perse.
Avec une dissertation curieuse sur les Moeurs, religion & gouvernement de cet etat. [with] Relation de l'empire de Maroc. Paris la Veuve Mabre Cramoisi 1695
Second edition of first work, first edition of second. 12mo (16 x 10 cm), pp.[x], 264, [24, contents], frontispiece, 5 plates, 2 folding, and folding map, title printed in red and black; [xvi], 224, [10], frontispiece, 8 plates, and folding plan, title printed in red black. A very good copy bound in contemporary speckled calf, spine gilt in compartments. Edges somewhat rubbed, spine worn. Hinges cracked but firm, front free endpaper torn. Contents clean.
Two late seventeenth-century French diplomatic accounts bound together, spanning the western and eastern Islamic world. The first work is by the French missionary François Sanson, who had joined Bishop Piquet of Baghdad at the Safavid court in 1683. After Piquet's death in 1685, Sanson remained to negotiate at court until 1692, when the shah issued a proclamation authorising Catholic missions at New Julfa and Hamadan. Sanson returned to France to present the shah's proclamation to Louis XIV at Versailles in 1693. This is his account of almost ten years in Persia during the waning years of Safavid rule. Court politics, dress, architecture, and commerce are all discussed. The second was written by the French diplomat François Pidou de Saint Olon, who was sent to negotiate a commercial treaty with Mulay Ismail, Sultan of Morocco, in 1693, following several earlier unsuccessful embassies. His mission too was unsuccessful prompting him to compile this account of Morocco, based on his brief time in the country and other published sources. The text includes a twenty-page account of his audiences at Mulay Ismail's court, and the text of the letter to Louis XIV which Pidou de Saint Olon brought back to France. The folding plan depicts the fortress by the port town of Larache, near Tangier.