Details

BURCKHARDT, John Lewis [1784-1817].. Travels In Syria And The Holy Land.

4to. pp. 2 p.l., xxiii, [3]errata, contents, & directions, 668. with half-title. lithographed frontis. portrait of Burckhardt after a sketch by Henry Salt. 6 engraved maps & plans (2 folding). numerous text illus. 19th century calf, former owner's gilt arms on covers, spine richly gilt (joints & edges somewhat rubbed, some scratches on covers, some light foxing to & offsetting from plates but overall an appealing copy). First Edition. Burckhardt travelled throughout North Africa and the Middle East for seven years under the auspices of the Association For Promoting The Discovery Of The Interior Parts Of Africa. A master of the Arabic language and the Islamic religion, he assumed the guise of an Arab using the name of Sheikh Ibrahim in his travels. His journals are invaluable for their observations on the Arab people and for his important geographical discoveries, including the site of Petra, Apameia, and the general structure of the peninsula of Mount Sinai. The present work was edited following Burckhardt's death by William Leake and published by the Association For Promoting The Discovery Of The Interior Parts Of Africa. Included are accounts of Burckhardt's lengthy sojourn in Aleppo, where he spent three years studying Arabic in preparation for his African travels, his six-months' journey in 1810-11 to Palmyra, Damascus, Baalbekk, Lebanon, and the Hauran, during which he encountered great danger and hardship because of the disturbed state into which the country had been thrown by the Wahhaby revolt, his expedition to Damascus through the Mountains of Arabia Petraea and Desert el Ty, to Cairo in the summer of 1812, and journal of a tour in the Peninsula of Mount Sinai in the spring of 1816. The appendix contains an account of the Ryhanlu Turkmans and observations on the division of Syria and the recent changes in the government of Aleppo. Blackmer 237. Tobler p. 141. Weber 107.

$4496 USD