Travels in Nubia

1 Volume.

Bookplate of Edward Brown Lees and his wife Dorothy Livesey

of Thurland Castle. www.heritage-explorer.co.uk/web/he/searchdetail.aspx?id=9992

Another bookplate is housed in the Achenbach Foundation Department of

the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

https://art.famsf.org/anonymous/bookplate-thurland-castle-edward-brown-lees-and-dorothy-livesey-19633020819

Contemporary full-calf tan binding.

New spine with morocco gilt title.

xcviii, 498 pages including 3 appendices.

Frontispiece drawing and 3 maps [2 folding].

Sporadic spotting/foxing.

John Lewis Burckhardt was born in Switzerland in 1784 and educated in Leipzig.

He traveled to England in 1806 and found employment with the African Association

with the objective of resolving some of the problems of the course of the Niger River.

He attended Cambridge where he studied Arabic, science and medicine in preparation

for his travels. In 1809 he left England and traveled to Syria and adapted the moniker

Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah. Over the next three years he succeeded in reaching

people and places in a way that no other Westerner had.

His travels took him all over northeast Africa along the Nile and through the desert.

He journeyed to Palmyra, Damascus, Lebanon, the Nile [as far as Darmahass]

and the Nubian desert.  On a trip to the ruins of Wady Mousa he became the first

Westerner to identify the site of the ancient capital of Petria.

A genius of assimilation, he disguised himself and became the first European to record the

pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. This volume records his travels through Nubia, along the

banks of the Nile and through the Nubian desert.

Not merely a geographic record, it is a  memoir of the customs, language, sites, sounds

and smells of an exotic world.

The work includes glossaries of several languages, maps of exploration and

itineraries and a memoir on the life and travels of the author.

Burckhardt died in Cairo in 1817 and was buried under his assumed name.  

Recorded shipping weight 2000g.

Shipped and insured by recorded delivery.