Les voyage [!] du sieur Du Loir, ensemble de ce qui se passa la mort du feu Sultan Mourat dans le Serrail, les ceremonies de ses funerailles; & celles de l'avenement l'Empire de Sultan Hibraim son frere, qui luy succeda. Avec la relation du siege de Babylone fait en 1639, par Sultan Mourat.

8vo. (16), 358, (24) pp. (including final errata leaf). Small woodcut vignette to title; woodcut intitials, head and tail pieces. Modern full calf, bound to style. First edition (variant title). - A series of ten letters written from 1639 to 1641 in which Du Loir gives his impressions of Constantinople and the Sultan's court, to which the author was privy as a member of the entourage of French ambassador Jean de La Haye. The originality of this correspondence lies also in the transliteration of several Qur'an verses (letter 5) and in providing the musical source of a Turkish song. The eighth letter includes the Ottoman text (and its French translation) of an account of the conquest of Baghdad, with a bilingual translation from Ottoman into French of the several titles of the Sultan and the other dignitaries of the court. - The author spent some eighteen months in the Levant: while he was in Turkey, Sultan Murad died and Du Loir was present at the coronation of Sultan Ibrahim. He returned to Venice in 1641 after passing through the Morea; the first and the last of the letters give some account of mainland Greece and the islands. "Cet ouvrage, crit avec conscience, contient sur les moeurs orientales de l' poque des documents utiles pour l'histoire de la Turquie" (NBG XV, 138). - This is the rarer (and probably earlier) variant edition, mentioned in Blackmer, with a different subtitle (instead of "contenu . sujets"). - Contemporary ownership ("G. Carius") to title; latterly in the collection of the American dietician and professor of medicine Edward E. Cornwall (b. 1866; his ownership signature to the front free endpaper), previously inscribed to N. O. Cornwall "with a merry Christmas". Insignificant browning, but a good copy. Uncommon on the market. - BM French (17th) D1038. Aboussouan 286. Cf. Atabey 373f. Blackmer 511. Weber II, 299. OCLC 43056926.