Exposé de la religion des Druzes: Tiré des livres religieux de cette secte, et précédé d'une introduction et de la vie du khalife Hakem-biamr-Allah

Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), the most distinguished French orientalist of his time, is considered the father of Arab scholarship in Europe. He had a lifelong interest in a little-known religious community, the Druze, which emerged in the eleventh century as an Ismaili schismatic movement. De Sacy's monumental study was begun in the 1790s, when he translated some of the Druze scriptures from Arabic to French. Such was his commitment to learning more about the Druze that he wa...