?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
LA ROQUE, JEAN DE. Voyage de l'Arabie Heureuse. 3 folding engraved plates of coffee plants; folding engraved map of southern Arabia and Yemen. [16], 403, [13] pages * Voyage dans le Palestine. 4 engraved plates, including one folding. [32], 316; [2], xiv, 76, [8], [8] pages, including 4-leaf bookseller's catalogue at end * Voyage de Syrie et du Mont Liban. 8 engraved plates, 3 of them folding (first with minor repair on verso, second with short clean tear); folding engraved map. [12], 347, [1]; [2], 321, [3] pages. 2 volumes. Together, 4 volumes. 12mo, 154x93 mm, late 18th-/early 19th-century uniform tree sheep gilt, rubbed, few spine ends chipped, rear joint of first work wormed; endleaves browned, scattered marginal spotting and intermittent minor dampstaining along top edges in all 4 volumes, blank upper outer corners slightly gnawed in first work. Paris: André Cailleau, 1716; 1717; 1722
first editions of La Roque's writings on the Middle East; issue of the first work with title dated 1716. The first book describes French expeditions to the Red Sea and concludes with a lengthy description of the cultivation and consumption of coffee in southern Arabia, an important early work on the subject. The second, edited by La Roque from a manuscript by Laurent d'Arvieux, concerns a French mission to Palestine and contains a French translation of the section on Arabia from the early 14th-century geography of Abu l-Fida. The third deals with the topography, inhabitants, religions, and antiquities of Lebanon. Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia, pages 28-31; Sarton III, 793-99.
