8vo. xxvii, 368 pp., steel engraved frontispiece portrait, contemporary morocco-backed boards, lightly faded, marbled endpapers, title gilt on decorated spine, occasional spotting, otherwise copy in very good condition, from the series entitled “ Bibliotheque Classique des Celebrites Contemporaines”, E. Ducrocq, Paris, c. 1860.

Synopsis

Pierre Amédée Emilien Probe Jaubert (1779 –1847), was a French diplomat, academic, orientalist, translator, politician, and traveller. He was Napoleon’s “favourite orientalist adviser and dragoman”. In 1805, he was dispatched to Qajar Persia in the “Jaubert Mission”, to arrange an alliance with Shah Fat′h Ali, but on the way there he was seized and imprisoned in a dry cistern for four months by the Pasha of Doğubeyazıt. He was released after the pasha died; he successfully accomplished his mission, and rejoined Napoleon in the Duchy of Warsaw (1807). On the eve of Napoleon’s downfall, he was appointed chargé d’affaires at Constantinople. The Bourbon Restoration ended his diplomatic career, but in 1818 he undertook a journey with government aid to Tibet, from whence he succeeded in introducing into France 400 Kashmir goats. Jaubert spent the rest of his life in study, writing and teaching. He became professor of Persian in the Collège de France, and director of the École des langues orientales, and in 1830 was elected member of the Académie des Inscriptions. In 1841 he was made a Peer of France and member of the Conseil d’État.
Bibliographic references: Cf. Atabey 613; Diba p. 312; Cf Schwab 287.