Folio. 42 pp., text within borders, 1 blank leaf, modern marbled boards, title gilt on spine, printer’s woodcut on last leaf, scattered foxing, few pencil annotations in margins, otherwise copy in good condition, [Imprimerie Royale, Paris], 1787.

Synopsis

Joseph de Guignes (1721 – 1800) was a French Orientalist, sinologist and Turkologist. He succeeded Étienne Fourmont at the Royal Library as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. His Mémoire historique sur l’origine des Huns et des Turcs, published in 1748, earned him admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and he became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754. There soon followed the three-volume work Histoire générale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares Occidentaux (1756–1758). In 1757, he was appointed to the chair of Syriac at the Collège de France.
The volume includes a Catalogue of manuscripts brought from the Levant by M. de Brèves (pages 40-42). This folio issue is unknown to Bigmore & Wyman I, 284, where only two 4to issues of 1787 and 1790 are listed.
Bibliographic reference: Schnurrer p 500.