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Burckhardt, M SOME ACCOUNT OF THE TRAVELS OF M. BURCKHARDT, IN EGYPT AND NUBIA. From the Calcutta Journal. London Sir Richard Phillips 1819

First Edition. 8vo, disbound. 30 pp. complete A clean, bright copy and very well preserved copy.

RARE FIRST EDITION. This work is an important original source of a highly important contemporary travel account. This pamphlet details a remarkable chapter in the life of John Lewis Burckhardt, the Swiss traveller and orientalist. Earlier in his career, Burckhardt had explored most of northeastern Africa disguised as an Islamic sheik, thereby gaining access to places and ideas never available to westerners before.
In a further test of his ability to assimilate, Burckhardt disguised himself as a poor Syrian merchant and crossed the Nubian desert to Mecca and Medina, becoming the first European to walk among the faithful in the holiest of Muslim places. His journal entries concerning this voyage are excerpted here.

$US550

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