gems, jade, Fischer-Book

Johann Heinrich Hottinger’s Historia orientalis is a 17th-century Latin survey of the history, religion, languages, customs, and peoples of the Near East and Islamic world. Drawing extensively upon Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, and earlier European sources, Hottinger discusses the origins and history of Islam, the life of Muhammad, Islamic religious beliefs and institutions, and the political and cultural history of Arab and other eastern peoples. The work reflects Hottinger’s expertise as an Orientalist and Semitic-language scholar and was intended to make information from Eastern sources more accessible to European readers. References to the natural products, commodities, and precious materials of the East occur within this broader historical and geographical treatment, making the work of some interest for the history of European knowledge of gems and other valuable substances associated with the Islamic and Asian worlds.