Voyage en Arabie. Séjour dans le Hedjaz. - Campagne d'Assir. Accompagné d'une carte

First edition, illustrated at the end of the second volume with a folding map outside the text (cf. Gay 3608. Numa Broc 307).

Contemporary cherry-red half calf bindings, spines with four false raised bands ruled in gilt and black, red paper-covered boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, speckled edges.

Scattered foxing, restorations to the joints and spines, a light dampstain to the lower margins affecting approximately the final two-thirds of the first volume.

A follower of Saint-Simon, Maurice Tamisier (1810-1875) travelled to Egypt in the aftermath of the 1830 Revolution with a small group led by Père Enfantin, who, following his imprisonment, hoped to unite in Cairo with the archetypal Woman in order to found a new society.

In December 1833, when he was only twenty-three, Enfantin sent him with Lamy to explore the shores of the Red Sea: the Hejaz from Jeddah, Yemen from Mocha, Asir, and other regions, making him one of the first Europeans to travel through these remote territories, then profoundly affected by the rise of Wahhabism.

Enfantin, who foresaw the imminent opening of the Isthmus of Suez and envisaged a peaceful conquest of the East, thus sought to establish staging points along the route to India.

After 1837, when he returned from his second journey to Ethiopia in the company of Edmond Combes, Maurice Tamisier abandoned his interest in Africa and exploration and turned instead to business.