Relation d’un voyage du Levant (Lyon, 1717) TOURNEFORT, Joseph Pitton de.- Relation d’un voyage du Levant, fait par ordre du Roy. Contenant l’histoire ancienne & moderne de plusieurs isles de l’archipel, de Constantinople, dos côtes de la Mer Noire, de l’Arménie, de la Georgie, des frontieres de Perse & de l’Asie Mineure...- A Lyon: Chez Anisson et Posuel, 1717.- 3 vols.: il.; 19 cm.- E. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708), a prestigious French botanist, born in Aix-en-Provence, was one of the first scientists to define the concept of genus (genus, genera), a term that classifies the group of higher level to the species and inferior to the family, in the modern biological scientific classification. In 1700, he was charged with organizing a scientific expedition to the Middle East, with the aim of studying and collecting new species. The account of the trip, which passed through the Cyclades Islands, Constantinople, Crete, Armenia, Persia, etc., but did not reach Egypt, as was predicted (due to the plague that was raging there), was published posthumously, in two editions in the same year 1717 (one in two volumes in-4th, in Paris, and this, in three volumes, in-8th, in Lyon) in the form of 22 extensive letters addressed to Louis Phélipeaux, count of Pontchartrain (1643-1727 ), Chancellor of France and Minister of the Navy. The collation of the three volumes is as follows: I - [22], 379 [1 br.] P .: 51 engravings; II - [4], 448 p .: 40 engravings; III - [4], 404, [64] p .: 62 engravings. The edition is illustrated with a total of 153 copperplate prints, according to drawings by Claude Aubriet, who also participated in the expedition, and mostly represents botanical species, but also views of Roman cities and antiques. Complete copy (from the smallest edition), slightly trimmed (carmine edges), but clean, lined with contemporary bindings, with flecked sheepskin, a little worn, with some weak joints. Provenance: ex-libris heraldic woodcut (with ducal crown?) not identified, with the inicial D VII; Roberto Gulbenkian Library. Atabey Library, 960. Brunet, V, 903.