MARIGNY, ABBÉ FRANCOIS AUGIER DE: - Histoire des arabes sous le gouvernement des califes. Four volumes. Paris 1750.

. 12mo. Pp. (iv), liv, 8 tables, 460; (iv), 535; (iv), 504, (19) table; (iv), 479, (4). Contemporary calf, spines richly decorated in gilt and with red title-labels. Traces of removed bookplates on front paste down. Extremities lightly rubbed. First edition of a popular work at the time.Abbé de Marigny (1690-1762), French historian, covers here the history of the Caliphs from Mahomet to the death of Mostazem, a period of more than 600 years. Contains a long preface of earlier works by Herbelot, Rollin and Renaudot. Cox i, p. 228. Gay 3586. Graesse iii, 399. Thonnelier, Bibl. orientale, 3225.This is an important history, covering the period from the foundation of Islam down to the death of the last Abbasid caliph Al-Musta'sim (reigned 1242-1258), executed following the Mongol sack of Baghdad. The Abbé François Augier de Marigny (c.1690-1762), who knew no Arabic, based his work on Barthelemy Herbelot's Bibliotheque orientale (1697), which in turn drew on the immense Arabic bibliography, the Kashf al-Zunun by the 17th-century Ottoman polymath Hadji Khalfa (Katip ‚elebi). "Marigny's history was a popular work aimed at a general readership" and was translated into German by the writer and philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who defended Marigny from criticism "on the grounds that he had used the best non-Arabic sources then available, and that a history of this kind is much better than no history at all. But the real motive for his defense É is his own sympathy with the Islamic world and his desire to publicise Marigny's positive account of Arab civilisation" (Nisbet, p. 154).