BEAUVAU, Henri de. Relation Iournalière du Voyage du Levant faict & descrit … Reveu augmenté et enrichy par l’Autheur…, Nannecy, Jacob Garnich, 1615.

Henri de Beauvau was a diplomat and an army officer. In November 1604 he escorted the French Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, De Salignac, on his journey to Constantinople. The voyage took him to the Ionian Islands, Methoni, Melos and Samos, and he also visited Chios, Rhodes and Cyprus. The first edition of Beauvau's chronicle was published in Toul in 1608, and the first illustrated edition in Nancy. The opening chapter narrates the mission's journey from Venice to Constantinople, where they stayed for four months. The second chapter gives a thorough description of the capital of the Ottoman Empire and of Ottoman institutions and customs. The third and fourth chapters refer respectively to Beauvau’s travels in the Holy Land and to his pilgrimage to the biblical sites. In the last two chapters Beauvau records his visit to Egypt, in particular to Cairo, and the return voyage to Naples, where the company arrived in November 1605. The engravings in this rare edition tend to imitate previous maps and city views, in the style of G. F. Camocio's "isolario", a very popular book in the late sixteenth century.

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou