Books in the Cambridge Library Collection - Travel, Middle East and Asia Minor series

The French author and traveller Constantin-Francois de Chasseboeuf (1757-1820) adopted the pen name Volney. In 1783-5, he spent time in Ottoman Egypt and the historical region of Syria. Reissued here is the revised and corrected French second edition of his account, which appeared in two volumes in 1787.

Of Czech ancestry, Albert Henry Wratislaw (1821-92) was educated at Rugby and Cambridge, and later became a prominent English public-school headmaster. At Cambridge he became interested in the literature and history of Bohemia and in 1849 he travelled there for the first time, quickly becoming proficient in the language. Upon his return home he began a lifetime of immersion in Czech literature. Published in 1862, this book was the first translation into English of a major Czech prose work. It is the vivid true story of a Bohemian nobleman's journey to, imprisonment in, and return from Constantinople in the late sixteenth century. Wratislaw's translation and brief introduction to Bohemian history proved popular and helped bring Czech literature and history to a wider audience.

Scottish explorer and author James Baillie Fraser (1783-1856) was already known for his narratives of travel in the East (his 1820 journal of a journey through the Himalayas being also reissued in this series) when in 1826 he published this account of his journey into the lesser known provinces of Persia. Though it includes an appendix containing information on geology and commerce, it dwells less on statistical and historical details than it does on the author's personal experiences and impressions. In his preface, Fraser summarily rejects factual material as 'insignificant', preferring to describe the manners of a people seldom encountered by Europeans. The work captures both the sights and sounds of bazaars and cities, and the characters of the people, from princes to peasant boys; and Fraser provides facts on topics ranging from rice cultivation to the architecture of ancient tombs and methods of cooling water.

Robert Walpole (1781-1856), great-nephew and namesake of Britain's first prime minister, was a classical scholar and clergyman. After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, he visited Greece and the Middle East. This work, first published in 1817 and reissued in its second edition in 1818, consists of extracts from the unpublished papers of J. B. S. Morritt, John Sibthorp, Philip Hunt, J. D. Carlyle and other travellers, with descriptions of antiquities, and notes by the editor. The topics vary considerably and reflect the wide interests of contemporary educated and travelled men at a time when many were extending their Grand Tour to the Eastern Mediterranean. They include discussions of the weakness of the Turkish government, observations on natural history, accounts of Greek Orthodox monastic libraries including those of Mount Athos, and descriptions of Greek pottery and archaeological excavations. The book remains a rich source for scholars from a wide range of disciplines.

The Scottish twin sisters Agnes Lewis (1843-1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843-1920) between them spoke modern Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Syriac, and were pioneering biblical scholars and explorers at a time when women rarely ventured to foreign lands. The sisters made several journeys to the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, discovering ancient biblical manuscripts, and their first two visits there were described in the 1893 publication How the Codex was Found (also available in this series). Lewis' In the Shadow of Sinai of 1898 was composed as a sequel to this work, dealing with the third and fourth journeys to Sinai, in 1895 and 1897. She gives a vivid account of the practicalities of desert travelling, as well as the excitement of the sisters and their academic colleagues as they recognised the significance of their discoveries in the monastic library.

First published in 1896, this work by Agnes Bensley (d. 1900), wife of the Orientalist and biblical scholar Robert Bensly (1831-93), describes the journey undertaken by a party of scholars to St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in 1893. In the previous year, sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson had discovered the Sinai Palimpsest, the earliest-known Syriac version of the Gospels. The purpose of the Bensly's mission was to aid them in transcribing and deciphering the Palimpsest. Beginning with the party's arrival in Cairo, the book describes the preparation for the trip, their journey across the desert, and life in the monastery. However, relations between the members of the party deteriorated; Gibson and Lewis wrote their own accounts of the expedition (also available in this series), and Mrs Bensly's narrative is defensive of the role of her husband, who died days after their return to England.

The Scottish twin sisters Agnes Lewis (1843-1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843-1920) between them spoke modern Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Syriac, and were pioneering biblical scholars and explorers at a time when women rarely ventured to foreign lands. The sisters made several journeys to the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, and their first two visits there are described in this 1893 publication. Using her sister's journals, Margaret Gibson tells how Agnes discovered a version of the Gospels in Syriac from the fifth century CE. This text is immensely important, being an example of the New Testament written in the eastern branch of Aramaic, the language that Jesus himself spoke. Meanwhile, Margaret Gibson studied other manuscripts in the library and photographed them; the sisters later transcribed and published many of these. Controversy over the circumstances of the discovery led to Margaret publishing this account in 1893.

The Scottish twin sisters Agnes Lewis (1843-1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843-1920), heiresses of an extremely wealthy man, between them learned numerous languages, including Modern Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Syriac, and became pioneering biblical scholars and explorers at a time when women rarely ventured to foreign lands. Their initial desire to travel to the Holy Land was encouraged by their Presbyterian minister. Setting out with their former teacher, Grace Blyth, in 1868, they travelled across Europe to Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Palestine. In this 1870 account, Lewis vividly describes the discomfort of long-distance travel, especially for women, and their encounters with the people they met on the way. At Constantinople they were struck by the beauty of Hagia Sophia, and saw whirling dervishes. They had some difficulties with their guide in Egypt, but this did not deter them, and they continued on to Palestine before returning to Europe.

Beyond the fact that he made a journey to the Holy Land between 1336 and 1341, very little is known about Ludolf von Suchem (whose first name may in fact have been Rudolf). However, his work has long been regarded as a major source of information about the eastern Mediterranean in the fourteenth century, owing to its high level of detail. Ludolf states his intention to describe the region, its buildings, towns, fortified places, people, customs, stories and legends, drawing on both his own observations, and on information from the 'kings, princes, nobles and lords' with whom he spent days and nights in conversation. Some stories are clearly travellers' tales, but others, like his account of the fall of Acre (1291), based on reports by eye-witnesses, are both full and convincing. This edition of the Latin text was published in 1851, with German annotation, by Ferdinand Deycks (1802-67).

The Florentine nobleman Leonardo Frescobaldi (fl. 1384-1405) travelled with two compatriots, and at the urging of the king of Naples, to the Holy Land in 1384-5, and he wrote this account on his return. It was published in 1818 by the librarian of the Barberini Library in Rome, Guglielmo Manzi (1784-1821), who prefixed to his edition an essay (also in Italian) on the activities of Italian merchants abroad in the fourteenth century. Frescobaldi and his companions went first to Venice, whence they sailed to Alexandria in Egypt, in order to visit St Catharine's monastery on the way to Jerusalem. Frescobaldi describes the churches and holy places in great detail, and then describes their route home, via Damascus and Beirut, thence by ship (and after enduring a terrible storm) to Venice. Frescobaldi's lively curiosity about everything he saw makes this account of his pilgrimage a fascinating read.

Cornish-born writer, traveller and controversialist James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855) spent much of his early life as a sailor in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and went on to publish accounts of his extensive travels to India, Palestine and Persia. His criticisms of the East India Company and the Bengal government led to his expulsion from India in 1823. In the 1830s he became a Member of Parliament and campaigned for social reforms and for the promotion of the temperance movement. He founded several journals, including the periodical The Athenaeum, covering a wide range of topics from literature to popular science. In this work, first published in 1821, Buckingham describes his journey from Egypt by sea to Syria and then to Palestine. He ascended Mount Tabor and visited the Holy Sepulchre, but considered his experiences in Bashan and Gilead, east of the Jordan, to form the climax of his journey.

This book of 'Persian Pictures' is the first published work of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), the celebrated traveller, archaeologist, Orientalist and supporter of Arab independence. She first visited Persia in 1892, when a relative by marriage was British minister there, and published her impressions in a series of essays in 1894. Her subjects range from Roman ruins to Ottoman graves to shopping in the bazaars, and from the bustling life of cities to the isolation of the desert. Having studied the Persian language in preparation for her journey, she was able to enter into the life of the country, and especially of its women, more deeply than a casual visitor, and indeed her second publication was a free-verse translation of the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz. Bell captures a sense of delight at a mysterious land still marked by the traces of many of the great civilisations of the past.

The antiquary Sir William Gell (1777-1836) was most famous for his two books on the archaeological discoveries at Pompeii (also reissued in this series) but his interest in the topography of classical sites is also reflected in this work, first published in 1823. Gell describes his experiences of many visits to the Peloponnese over a period of twenty years, during which the Greek movement for independence from the Ottoman Empire was gathering momentum and widespread support in Europe. Written partly in response to a request to 'give us anything but your dull maps and measures', the book does not discuss archaeological sites in detail but rather records impressions of the lives of the Greek and Turkish inhabitants in the period immediately before the outbreak of war. Gell's own conclusions about the prospects for 'Grecian liberty' are gloomy: he holds it to be 'quite unattainable at the present day'.

Henry C. Barkley (c.1825-c.1895) was a civil engineer and author. His travel books included Between the Danube and the Black Sea (1876), which covers the five years in which he was working on the construction of a railway line linking the Danube and the Black Sea, and Bulgaria before the War (1877), written at the time of the Russo-Turkish war. (He also wrote a guide to rat-catching for public-school boys, and My Boyhood (1877), a collection of tales from his own childhood.) Published in 1891, this work recounts the author's adventures on a journey that took him in 1878 from Bucharest, through Istanbul, across Asia Minor and back to Trebizond (now Trabzon) on the Black Sea coast, a distance of 1400 miles, completed in 96 days. He describes with zest and humour the habits and customs of Christian and Muslim communities that he encounters on the way.

Beyond the fact that he made a journey to the Holy Land between 1336 and 1341, very little is known about Ludolf von Suchem (whose first name may in fact have been Rudolf). However, his work has long been regarded as a major source of information about the eastern Mediterranean in the fourteenth century, owing to its high level of detail. Ludolf states his intention to describe the region, its buildings, towns, fortified places, people, customs, stories and legends, drawing on both his own observations, and on information from the 'kings, princes, nobles and lords' with whom he spent days and nights in conversation. Some stories are clearly travellers' tales, but others, like his account of the fall of Acre (1291), based on reports by eyewitnesses, are both full and convincing. This English translation, by Aubrey Stewart (1844-1918), of Ludolf's Latin text was published in 1895.

Traveller, archaeologist, mountaineer and diplomat, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) poured her extraordinary talents into a series of adventures through Europe and the Middle East. Addressing her experiences in Persia and Syria respectively, Safar Nameh (1894) and The Desert and the Sown (1907) are both reissued in this series. The present work, first published in 1911 and among Bell's most acclaimed, describes her recent expedition to Mesopotamia. She recounts her outward journey to the Abbasid palace of Ukhaidir and her return via Baghdad and Asia Minor. Notably discussing changes in the region after the rise of the Young Turks, including their easing of restrictions throughout the declining Ottoman Empire, Bell also saw this book as 'the attempt to record the daily life, the speech of those who had inherited the empty ground where empires had risen and expired'. Replete with photographs, it vividly opens up Middle Eastern history and archaeology.

John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817) was a Swiss explorer who is best remembered for his rediscovery of the ancient city of Petra in modern Jordan. In 1809 he was commissioned by the African Association to discover the source of the River Niger. In preparation for this journey, for which he needed to pass as a Muslim, Burckhardt spent two years exploring and studying Arabic and Islamic law in Aleppo, before travelling widely in Arabia and Egypt. First published in 1822, this book provides 'a view of Arabian life and manners in every degree, from the Bedouin camp to the populous city', but the most striking passages describe the ruins of Petra, and especially its sumptuously carved Nabataean tombs. Burckhardt also records his frustration at not being able to explore freely and make notes, but these activities would have laid him open to suspicion of being a spy or an infidel, and almost certain death.

Lucie Duff Gordon (1821-1869) was a translator and travel writer. Forced to leave England in 1851 due to tuberculosis, she went first to South Africa and then to Egypt. Her letters home were published with considerable success. She writes with great feeling about the ordinary life of the Egyptians: her interest in and sympathy with them is clear, and her affection for them led her to criticise the derogatory way in which many western visitors regarded them. This second, posthumous volume (the first, Letters from Egypt, 1863-65, is also reissued in this series) contains not only the letters from the latter half of her time in Egypt, but also her letters from the Cape, and a memoir by her daughter, Janet Ross.

Lucie Duff Gordon (1821-1869) was a translator and travel writer. Forced to leave England in 1851 due to tuberculosis, she went first to South Africa and then to Egypt. Her letters home were published, with considerable success. She writes with great feeling about the ordinary life of the Egyptians: her interest in and sympathy with them is clear, and her great affection for them led to criticism of the derogatory way in which many western visitors regarded them. But she was also highly critical of the effects of western influence on them, and her comments about the Suez Canal project and new railroads being achieved by forced labour and high taxes were not well received: some of her political opinions were removed from subsequent editions. This volume, first published in 1865, was edited by her mother, also a writer, and covers the years 1862-1865, including her voyage out.

Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (1841-1917), was a British statesman and colonial administrator. After a successful career in the War Office he was appointed the Controller General of Egypt in 1879. After the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, Baring became Consul General of Egypt, a position he held until his resignation in 1907. Modern Egypt, published in 1908 and revised in 1910, can be regarded as his justification for his actions in Egypt, and has been described as 'one of the classic works of Victorian imperialist writing'. It explains why Britain became involved in Egypt, when the collapse of the economy threatened the political stability of the region. Subsequently Britain and France took dual control, to keep Ottoman Turkey out, and to protect access to the Suez Canal. Cromer was an influential player in the events he describes, and, allowing for bias, the book remains a valuable record.

John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817) was a Swiss explorer who is best remembered for his rediscovery of the ancient city of Petra in modern Jordan. In 1809 he was commissioned by the African Association to discover the source of the River Niger. In preparation for this journey, for which he needed to pass as a Muslim, Burckhardt spent two years exploring and studying Arabic and Islamic law in Aleppo, before travelling widely in Arabia and Egypt. This volume, first published posthumously in 1830 by the African Association, contains a collection of Arabic proverbs. The main group derives from an eighteenth-century collection, to which Burckhardt added proverbs he had heard during his residence in Cairo. Given in both Cairene Arabic and English, with Burckhardt's explanations of the context in which they were used, these proverbs provide a valuable source for the language and culture of nineteenth-century Cairo.

Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) was a Scottish diplomat and colonial administrator. After joining the civil service of the East India Company in 1796 he was appointed the first British envoy to the Court of Kabul in 1808. In 1819 he was appointed the Governor of Bombay, and after his retirement in 1827 he devoted his life to historical and literary studies. First published in 1815, this volume contains Elphinstone's detailed description of the Kingdom of Afghanistan. Elphinstone describes the geography, economy and political situation of the kingdom and provides a brief account of Afghan history. He also gives the first detailed ethnographic accounts of the various Afghan tribes and ethnic groups in the kingdom. This fascinating volume informed British military and diplomatic policy in the region until the 1840s, and remained the main source of information on the culture of the Afghan tribes for much of the nineteenth century.

Isabella Bishop (nee Bird) published her Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan in 1891, compiled from a series of letters home. Recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for physical and nervous difficulties, Bird toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Far East. After her marriage, and the death of her husband in 1886, she did missionary work in India and then, in 1890, travelled to little-known parts of Turkey, Persia and Kurdistan in the company of Major Herbert Sawyer of the Indian Army. This came to be the hardest journey of her experience, with extremes of temperature and harsh living conditions for the sixty-year-old, although she was able to provide medical care for the local people. Volume 1 introduces the region, its people, and their customs and includes many evocative anecdotes. It also contains a glossary and maps.

Isabella Bishop (nee Bird) published her Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan in 1891, compiled from a series of letters home. Recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for physical and nervous difficulties, Bird toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the Far East. After her marriage, and her husband's death, she did missionary work in India and, in 1890, travelled to little-known parts of Turkey, Persia and Kurdistan. This was her most challenging journey, with extremes of temperature and harsh living conditions for the sixty-year-old, although she was able to provide medical care for the local people. Despite vicissitudes, her passion for travel is clear throughout. Volume 2 of this fascinating account continues into Kurdistan and towards the end on the Black Sea. The appendices include prayers from Mecca and a record of her itinerary, including journey times.

This work, first published in 1847, is an account by Constantin von Tischendorf (1815-74) of his journeying in the Middle East at the beginning of the 1840s. It is part travel log and part account of the Christian history of the area. After encounters with such men as Mehmet Ali and Ibrahim Pasha, he visits the library of the Patriarch of Alexandria. The German biblical scholar then travels to the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, where he makes the extraordinary discovery of a previously unknown fourth-century manuscript, one of the main witnesses to the Septuagint, before reaching the main goal of his long journey - Jerusalem. This lively narrative by a controversial scholar-explorer also entertains the reader with some of the more unexpected elements of his travels, such as an attack by robbers who are routed when he draws his sword.

This book was immediately recognised on its publication in 1894 as a major work of scholarship, and reached twenty-five editions during its author's lifetime. The intention of George Adam Smith (1856-1942) was to produce a work which would 'give a vision of the land as a whole' and help the reader 'to hear through it the sound of running history'. Smith, an enthusiastic alpinist, had studied divinity in Edinburgh, and first visited Palestine in 1880, travelling around the country on foot. The book was written while Smith was teaching at Glasgow, and working on various social projects in Scotland. His detailed knowledge of the territory, together with his wide familiarity with the archaeological and historical background, gives the work authority. The book places the land in its historical context, and describes the physical geography and climate; the readability of its style is enhanced by detailed maps, some in colour.

Later viceroy of India, George Curzon (1859-1925) published this highly regarded two-volume work on Persia in 1892, following his travels in the country. Convinced of the political importance of this region as a buffer against Russian influence, Curzon gives an overview of Persian history, society, geography and politics.

This illustrated two-volume work, published in French in 1717 and translated into English in 1718, recounts a journey undertaken in 1700 by botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) around the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Volume 1 begins with a biography of Tournefort, and ends in Constantinople.

Published posthumously in 1831, this two-volume work by James Rennell, the father of historical geography, surveys an area from Egypt to the Danube and from the Aegean to the Caspian Sea. Volume 1 lays out his geographical findings, and begins to discuss the relations of modern to ancient sites.

Physician Robert Richardson (1779-1847) accompanied the household of the earl of Belmore on a tour of the eastern Mediterranean in his yacht, and dedicated this two-volume work to his patron in 1822. Volume 1 recounts their journey up the Nile, exploring both the antiquities of Egypt and the modern cities.