Description

John Lewis Burckhardt (1784−1817) was born Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in Lausanne, Switzerland. His accounts of his travels in the Middle East in the early 19th century are among the earliest modern European descriptions of Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan. Upon finishing university studies in Switzerland, he went to England to enroll in Cambridge University, where he studied Arabic and Islam in order to prepare himself for a career as an explorer-adventurer. As his acquaintance Muhammad ‘Ali Basha, ruler of Egypt, said of his adventurism, he possessed the “travelling madness ...