This article takes an historical perspective and attempts to describe the exceptional destiny of a canonic work written in Arabic in the first quarter of the Renaissance, and later translated into Latin and several other European languages, including French in 1956, a translation which was reedited in 1981. The evolution of these translations is studied both synchronically and diachronically, with particular emphasis on the effects of the Description's penetration into European societies. An interpretation of the paratextual materials demonstrates the epistemological configurations, the generic shifts and various forms of coding- military, academic, diplomatic, ecclesiastical and literary - the work has undergone and which have contributed to preventing the encounter the author desired between the Orient and the West.