Jean Louis Burckhardt

Biography

Born with Lausanne, he studies with Leipzig and the Université of Göttingen. He visits the England during the summer 1806 with a letter of introduction of the naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach to sir Joseph Banks. This last, as well as the members of the African Association , agrees in 1809 its offer to assemble a forwarding to discover the source of the Niger. It then decides to go to the Raising to study the Arab there, convinced that its voyage in Africa would be facilitated if one took it for a Musulman.

In preparation of this voyage, he studies Arabic with the Université of Cambridge and walks without Chapeau in the English countryside during a Canicule, nourishing plants and of water and door frame to very the ground.

He leaves England in March 1809 and makes a short stopover with Malta before arriving at Alep in Syria in autumn there to improve his Arabic and to study the Moslem Droit. He takes the name of Ibrahim ibn Abdullah (“ Sheik Ibrahim ”). Certain indices show that its conversion with Islam was perhaps sincere, although its family denies it.

It thus spends two years to Raising and polishes its Arabic there; he learns so much well the Coran that even the most educated Moslems it believed when he said that he was an expert in Moslem right.

During these two years in Syria he visits Palmyre, Damas, and the Lebanon and makes several voyages of exploration in the area. At the time of the one of these voyages he has discovered the city nabatéenne of Pétra, forgotten for almost thousand years. But not very satisfied with the importance of this discovery, it decides to be devoted to its initial goal: to find the source of Niger. With this intention, it goes to the Cairo, intending to join a Caravane going in the Fezzan in Libya. In 1812, while waiting for the departure of the caravan, which had been pushed back, it sails on the the Nile, discovering the temples of Abou Simbel, and goes until Dar Mahass and the Dongola. Not finding a passage towards the west, it is made pass for a poor Syrian merchant and crosses the Désert of Nubie, passing by Berber, Shendi and Suakin, a port on the Red Sea, from where it embarks for the Hajj with Mecque while passing by Djeddah. There remain three months in Mecque and visit then Médine.

After many difficulties and severe deprivations, it goes back to Cairo in June 1815 taken of a great tiredness. However, in spring 1816 it travels to the Mont the Sinai and returns to Cairo in June, where it prepares for its voyage in Fezzan. But several problems emerge, preventing it from leaving. Finally, at the time of the departure so much awaited of the caravan in April 1817, he falls ill of Dysentery and dies about it on October 15th.

He often sent his notes, his newspapers and his very abundant correspondence in England, therefore few details of its voyages were lost. He bequeathed his collection of eight hundred Eastern volumes of Manuscrit S to the Bibliothèque of the university of Cambridge.

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Sources

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