Voyage de l'Inde à la Mekke, par A'bdoûl-Kérym, favori de Tahmas-Qouly-Khân, extrait et traduit de la version anglaise de ses mémoires, avec des notes géographiques, littéraires etc. par Langlès. Collection portative de voyages. SIX VOLUMES.

Louis- Mathieu Langlès was a friend and colleague of the distinguished French Orientalist Antoine Isaac Sylvester de Sacy and had studied Arabic, Chinese, Malay and Persian. In addition to his numerous publications on the topography, languages and culture of the East, his main contribution to Oriental studies was his part in the foundation of the École spéciale des langues Orientales vivantes in Paris in 1795. This institution which replaced École des Langues Orientales, was unique in Europe, and specialised in teaching the spoken, rather than the classical, languages of the East. Langlès himself was given the chair of Persian. These volumes contain Langlès’s translations of various accounts of journeys in the East, the first of which is the pilgrimage of Abd al-Karim ibn Aqibat ibn Muhammed Bulaqi al-Kashmiri to Mecca and which had been translated into English by Francis Gladwin in 1788. Langlès’s own translation was based on Galdwin's but Langlès added explanatory notes. The second volume contains Langlès's translation of the account of Abd al-Razaq, who was appointed ambassador to India by Shah Rukh, one of the sons of Timur, in the mid-15th century; and of a memoir by William Franklin who traveled in the service of the East India Company from Bengal to Shiraz in 1787 and 1788. The remainder of the work is largely composed of a translation of the landscape-painter William Hodges's travels in India in the early 1780s and contains some particularly fine plates. Bibliographic references: Brunet III - 820 - Gay 3631 Chahine 2618.