Johann Ludwig Burckhardt – författare

Travels in Syria and the Holy Land is a masterpiece in descriptive and scholarly travelogue. It describes the author's various journeys throughout the Holy Land between 1810 and 1816 win which he records every aspect of the life of the inhabitants, their religion and culture. He also provides fascinating details of topography, natural history and archaeology.

John Lewis Buckhardt (1784-1817) is among the most intrepid and veracious o all the early European explorers of the interior of Africa. His many journal, published, after his death, by the African Association are remarkable alike for their interst and evident truthfulness.

Having studied and prepared himself for the rigours of the life of an explorer, Burckhardt travelled widely throughout North Africa and Asia, surviving in a hostile Muslim world by passing himself off as a pilgrim. Indeed, so proficient was he in the Arab language and knowledge of their religion that learned Arabs unwittingly commended him as a great Muslim scholar.

The present edition is taken in facsimile from the rare first edition of 1822, including its maps and line drawings.

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817), the great Swiss Orientalist, devoted his regrettably short life to travels and explorations in Africa and the near east, under the aegis of the African association. Under the name of Shaikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah and wearing local dress, he gained a profound knowledge of Islamic Law and Customs, and a mastery of both contemporary and classical Arabic of the Qur'an seldom equalled by a European. Burckhardt arrived in Cairo from Syria in 1812. Later he travelled up the Nile and thence eastward through Shendi and Suakin to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, returning across the Red Sea to Suez in 1815. He visited Mt Sinai the next year, but while waiting in Cairo, planning an epic journey across the Sahara, he contracted dysentery and died. He had a deep empathy for Islam and was buried as a holy pilgrim in the Muslim cemetery there.The African Society undertook the publishing of his Journals, and these valuable works are being meticulously republished in a facsimile edition by Darf publishers, so they are once more accessible to both scholars and travellers as well as the informed reader.