Title: Nachrichten über Persien und die Perser.
[Remarks on Persia and the Persians.]
Weimar: Industrie-Comptoirs, 1807. 8vo. 29 pages. Text is in German.
This is a complete monthly issue, containing the above mentioned account.
Attractively bound booklet style in recent blue paper covers with label.
This issue contains a fascinating compendium on Persia, written during the
Russo-Persian War and the brief Franco-Persian alliance. The author draws
from and quotes passages of Guillaume-Antoine Olivier's now extremely scarce title,
the final volume of which had finally been published the same year in 1807,
"Le Voyage dans l'Empire Othoman, l'Égypte et la Perse"
[A Journey in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Persia].
An early nineteenth century account covering geography, natural history, commodities
such as gold and silver, and social customs from various different ethnic groups.
In this text Persians are ascribed attributes such as civilized, rich,
polite, and hospitable, at the same time struggling with long-standing
inter-racial conflicts between Arabs, Uzbeks, Kurds, Afghans, and Turkmen (Turkoman),
the latter of which are described as warlike.
Further topics of interest include practices of astrology, medicine,
opium usages, and nomadic gypsies. A scarce dissertation and unique item
to pair with the collector's volume.
Guillaume-Antoine Olivier (1756-1814) was one of the great French naturalists
and entomologists, who in 1796, together with physician and zoologist Jean-Guillaume Bruguières, travelled to Persia for six years on a major expedition, and returned to France in 1798 with substantial natural history specimens from Turkey, Asia Minor, Persia (Iran), Egypt, and some Mediterranean islands.
His large collection is now mostly at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
These are the original pages printed in 1807, and NOT a reprint.
This narrative is from a rare multi-volume geographical and scientific journal titled "Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden", which issued fifty volumes from 1798-1816
and which encompassed critical contemporary topics of geography and astronomy.
Adam Christian Gaspari and Franz Xaver von Zach were editors of this important
scientific journal.
The 1804-1813 Russo-Persian War, one of the many wars between the
Persian Empire and Imperial Russia, began like many wars as a territorial
dispute. The Persian king, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, wanted to consolidate the
northernmost reaches of his Qajar dynasty by securing land near the Caspian Sea's southwestern coast (modern Azerbaijan) and the Transcaucasus (modern Georgia and Armenia). Like his Persian counterpart, the Russian czar Alexander I was also
new to the throne, and equally determined to control the disputed territories.
A Franco-Persian alliance was formed for a short period between the
French Empire of Napoleon I and the Persian Empire of Fath Ali Shah, against
Russia and Great Britain between 1807 to 1809. The alliance was part of a grand Napoleonic scheme to cross the Middle-East in order to attack British India.
The alliance unravelled when France finally allied with Russia and turned its
focus to European campaigns.
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