Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing Patterns of Travel to the Middle East from Medieval to Modern Times

Paul Starkey, MA, DPhil, is Emeritus Professor at Durham University and Chair of ASTENE. A specialist on Arabic literature and culture, he is Chairman of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature and until 2018 was Vice-President of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES). ; Janet Starkey, MA (Hons), M.Phil., PhD, lives in the Scottish Borders. A former lecturer on the Anthropology of the Middle East at Durham University and a founder member of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE), she edited the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies between 2007 and 2018.

Introduction – Paul and Janet Starkey ;


1. Pilgrimage as Travel – Jacke Phillips ;


2. Ibn Jubayr’s Riḥla Reconsidered – Paul Starkey ;


3. ‘Gardens of Paradise’ – Janet Starkey ;


4. ‘Wady Ghrásheca’: an unknown Christian site in Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s unpublished manuscripts from the Eastern Desert – Jan Ciglenečki & Blaž Zabel ;


5. Exploring the Ottoman Empire: the travels of Peter Mundy (1597–c.1667) in Turkey 1617–1620 – Jennifer Scarce ;


6. With a radius most accurately divided into 10,000 parts: John Greaves and his scientific survey of Egypt in 1638–1639 – Ronald E. Zitterkopf ;


7. Dimitrie Cantemir, the ‘Orpheus of the Turkish Empire’ (1673– 1723) – Cristina Erck ;


8. The Artist William Page (1794–1872) and his travels in Greece and western Turkey in the first half of the nineteenth century – Brian J. Taylor ;


9. Jacob Röser: a Bavarian physician travelling the Ottoman Empire in 1834–1835 – Joachim Gierlichs ;


10. Publishing with ‘Modern Taste and Spirit’ – Paulina Banas ;


11. ‘Mr and Mrs Smith of England’: a tour to Petra and east of Jordan in 1865 – David Kennedy ;


12. Anton Prokesch-Osten Jr (1837–1919) – Angela Blaschek ;


13. William Wing Loring, George Brinton McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant: American Civil War Generals in Egypt during the 1870s – Mladen Tomorad ;


14. Consular Agents and Foreign Travellers in Upper Egypt in the Nineteenth Century – Terence Walz ;


15. A Luxor Room with a View at Pagnon’s Hotels – Sylvie Weens ;


16. Richard A. Bermann, the Desert and the Mahdi: an Austrian writer’s fascination with Egypt and the Sudan – Ernst Czerny ;


17. Unlawful Acts and Supernatural Curses: the fictional traveller in Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) – Rebecca Bruce ;


Notes on Contributors ;


Index