PUBLISHED BY THE ASSOCIATION FOR PROMOTING THE DISCOVERY OF THE INTERIOR
PARTS OF AFRICA.
[1822]
PREFACE OF THE EDITOR.
[p.i]It is hoped that little apology is necessary for the publication of
a volume of Travels in Asia, by a Society, whose sole professed object
is the promotion of discoveries in the African continent.
The Association having had the good fortune to obtain the services of a
person of Mr. Burckhardt's education and talents, resolved to spare
neither time nor expense in enabling him to acquire the language and
manners of an Arabian Musulman in such a degree of perfection, as should
render the detection of his real character in the interior of Africa
extremely difficult.
It was thought that a residence at Aleppo would afford him the most
convenient means of study, while his intercourse with the natives of
that city, together with his occasional tours in Syria, would supply him
with a view of Arabian life and manners in every degree, from the
Bedouin camp to the populous city. While thus preparing himself for the
ultimate object of his mission, he was careful to direct his journeys
through those parts of Syria which had been the least frequented by
European travellers, and thus he had the opportunity of making some
important additions to our knowledge of one of those countries of which
the geography is not less interesting by its connection with ancient
history, than it is imperfect, in consequence of the impediments which
modern barbarism has opposed to scientific researches. After consuming
near three years in Syria, Mr. Burckhardt, on his arrival in Egypt,
found himself prevented from pursuing the execution of his instructions,
by [p.ii] a suspension of the usual commercial intercourse with the
interior of Africa, and was thus, during the ensuing five years, placed
under the necessity of employing his time in Egypt and the adjacent
countries in the same manner as he had done in Syria. After the journeys
in Egypt, Nubia, Arabia, and Mount Sinai, which have been briefly
described in the Memoir prefixed to the former volume of his travels,
his death at Cairo, at the moment when he was preparing for immediate
departure to Fezzan, left the Association in possession of a large
collection of manuscripts concerning the countries visited by their
traveller in these preparatory journeys, but of nothing more than oral
information as to those to which he had been particularly sent. As his
journals in Nubia, and in the regions adjacent to the Astaboras,
although relating only to an incidental part of his mission to Africa,
were descriptive of countries coming strictly within the scope of the
African Association, these, together with all his collected information
on the interior of Africa, were selected for earliest publication. The
present volume contains his observations in Syria and Arabia Petraea; to
which has been added his tour in the Peninsula of Mount Sinai, although
the latest of all his travels in date, because it is immediately
connected, by its subject, with his journey through the adjacent
districts of the Holy Land.
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