First edition, based on Arabic texts by Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi and Ahmad ibn Arabshah. Sommervogel V, 542.
Contemporary full brown calf bindings, spines richly gilt, tan morocco lettering-pieces, joints of the first volume rubbed, a small loss at the foot of the spine, spine and joints of the second volume extensively restored, traces of gilt rolls on the board edges, endpapers and pastedowns, speckled edges. Library stamps on the half-title and title-page, as well as a flyleaf. Library shelfmark on the pastedown.
The work was condemned after Tamerlane's thinly veiled portrait was thought to contain a depiction of the Regent. In the epistle to the Comte de Maurepas, Father Margat mentions his membership of the Jesuit missions in Saint-Domingue, where he was probably stationed in order to shield him from prosecution. His editor, Pierre Brumoy, was himself harassed and forced to leave Paris for refuge in Arras. Voltaire recounts the affair in his correspondence:
"I have been told that a Jesuit named Brumoi had a certain Tamerlane by a certain Jesuit named Margat printed. The author is dead and the editor exiled, it is said, because this Tamerlane is, so they say, full of the most horrible slanders ever uttered against the late M. le duc d'Orléans, Regent of the kingdom."
(Letter to the Marquis d'Argens, 21 June 1739)"
