Memoires Du Levant

The author of the manuscript is identified in the preface and on f. 62 as the Sieur de la Croix de Sainte-Croix, who, in 1705, had recently returned to France from the East. According to the author of the preface, he had spent seven years in the Levant, ca 1698-1705. He was a native of Sainte-Croix in the environs of Bordeaux, which he left at the age of 14 to study in Paris. He left Paris on his travels at the age of 21, departing from Marseille for the Levant. On his return from the East he eventually settled in Brussels, which had been occupied by the French since 1695, and remained there until the French evacuation in 1746. This information would indicate that the manuscript, or at least the preface, which is in a different hand from the rest of the manuscript, was transcribed after 1746. It is clear from indications in the preface that the manuscript is a fair copy of an earlier transcription. However, de la Croix’s identity remains obscure. Again, according to the author of the preface, de la Croix was involved in work for one of the French government ministries and travelled extensively in the region between Brussels and Lille. He cannot be identified with either the Orientalist François Petis de la Croix (1653-1713) or the Sieur de la Croix who wrote the Memoires ... très curieuses de l’Empire ottoman, 1684. The preface is signed, but the signature is not clear. It may be ‘Bercout’.