Studying under Silvestre de Sacy, from 1806 he took up duties as a dragoman and consular official first in Cairo and then in Alexandria.
He built up a collection of some 1500 manuscripts, including a significant corpus of Koranic parchment leaves harking from a collection at the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Old Cairo, personally chosen for the variety of their writings with a view to developing an Arabic palaeography.
His collection, also comprising Arabic manuscripts, a few Persian and Turkish manuscripts from different periods and texts written at his request in their language by students at Al-Azhar from various backgrounds, was acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale (then known as the Royal Library) from his heirs in 1833.
Locutions et dialogues en arabe vulgaire de la Syrie, de la main d'Asselin. Manuscrit arabe