Travel in Syria and the Holy Land

Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burkhardt (1784-1817) was a Swiss traveller, geographer and orientalist, best known for rediscovering the ruins of the ancient Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan. After studying at Leipzig and Gottingen universities he travelled to England in 1806 hoping to join the civil service but was unsuccessful. Instead he took employment with the African Association, a club founded in 1788 whose mission was to discover the origin and course of the Niger River and the location of Timbuktu. In preparation for an expedition calling for an overland journey from Cairo to Timbuktu, he attended Cambridge University to study Arabic science and medicine. At this time he adopted Arabian costume and in 1809 travelled to Aleppo in Syria to perfect his Arabic and learn Muslim customs. In Syria he took the name Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah to hide his European identity, and after two years living as a Muslim he felt it was safe to travel without being questioned. When he left Aleppo in 1812 to head for Cairo he suffered many setbacks, losing all his possessions to an unscrupulous guide who abandoned him in the desert. After obtaining a new guide he continued on his journey and in August 1812 became the first European to lay eyes on Petra, an account of which he gave in his book Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (1822). After 4 months in Cairo he set off on a pilgrimage to Mecca, performing rituals associated with the Hajj unheard of for a European, and the detailed observations in his journals were invaluable to explorer Richard Burton when he travelled to Mecca several decades later. Burckhardt spent the last two years of his life living quietly in Cairo editing his journals and preparing for the caravan that would take him across the Sahara to Timbuktu and the Niger, but stricken with dysentery he died before making the intended journey. His works, which also included Travels in Nubia (1819) and Travels in Arabia (1829), were published posthumously by the African Association.