André Michaux travelled from the Levant to Syria and Iraq to Persia. This extract from his diary tells of his discovery of the ruins of the Byzantine village of Zebed in Syria in October 1782, where he found Christian funerary monuments and a rare trilingual Greek-Syrian-Arabic inscription placed on a "martyrium” - a monument dedicated to the Christian martyr St. Sergius of Rafa. The site was only excavated in the 20^th century.

Ms G 103, Bibliothèque municipale de Versailles.