‎(LA FAYE, JEAN BAPTISTE DE).‎
‎Etat des Royaumes de Barbarie, Tripoly, Tunis et Alger. - [ON TUNIS, ALGIERS & TRIPOLI]‎

‎A La Haye, Gillaume de Voys, 1704. 12mo (165 x 110 mm). In contemporary full calf with five raised bands with richly gilt spine. Edges of boards gilt. Traces from small paper-label pasted on to top of spine. Wear to extremities, boards with scratches and some of the gilt ornamentation to spine worn off. Ex-libris pasted on to pasted down front end-paper. (8), 363 pp. Internally very nice and clean. ‎

Reference : 60942

‎Second edition, first published the year before in 1703, of this collection of letters from Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers, containing detailed description of the geography and natural and political history of each city. “The first edition of the ‘Etat des royaumes de Barbarie’ appeared anonymously in 1703, and most biographers of the period attributed it incorrectly to the Mathurin Father and editor Jean-Baptiste de La Faye. Addressed to the superior general of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, the four letters that make up the État were in fact written by Philemon de La Motte, who had been sent on a mission to redeem Christian slaves in the Barbary states of North Africa. Consists of three letters written in the year 1700 during a Mathurin mission to ransom French Christian captives in North Africa, and a fourth letter composed of a series of five dialogues between the author and a mysterious Christian living in Tripoli on the teachings and history of the Church regarding the redemption and consolation of Christian lives.” According to Barbier an earlier edition was published in Rouen in 1703, another issue with the same collation was published in 1704 under the imprint of Meyndert Uytwerf. Barbier II, 297.‎