It is well known among scholars that the term gerboise “jerboa” made it's entrance in standard French in 1712, thanks to Paul Lucas - Louis XIV's special envoy to Orient and Africa - who brought a couple of jerboas to Versailles in 1707. On reading and translating in depth the Vatican manuscript Sbath 254, where the Aleppian Hanna Diyab - Lucas' interpreter - annotated many events of their travels from Aleppo to Versailles, through North Africa, I found some new facts concerning this event in 2014. Comparing the version related by Lucas in his Voyage ... with that of Hanna Diyab's travelogue Riḥla ..., that may shed new light on the passage of the Arab term ǧerbūʿ to the French gerboise, and Louis XIV's Private life.
