8vo. xxxii, 309 pp., frontispiece portrait, half-title, contemporary half-calf, title gilt on raised decorated spine, copy clean and in very good condition, Georg Muller, Munchen & Leipzig, 1913.

Synopsis

Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer (1790 – 1861) was a Tyrolean traveller, journalist, politician and historian. In February 1823 he learned of a prize offered by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters to encourage research into the history of the Empire of Trebizond. This medieval kingdom, located on the south coast of the Black Sea, was at the time known only through scattered references in Byzantine and Turkish chronicles. Fallmerayer began to collect additional sources in a number of languages, including Arabic and Persian, from libraries across Europe, and corresponded with various scholars, including Silvestre de Sacy and Carl Benedict Hase.
Fallmerayer resolved to travel abroad to collect material for the projected second volume. An opportunity presented itself when the Russian Count Alexander Ivanovich Ostermann-Tolstoy arrived in Munich, seeking a learned companion for an eastward journey. Fallmerayer applied for and received a year-long leave from his teaching duties, and in August 1831 departed from Munich with Ostermann-Tolstoy.
The two sailed first from Trieste to Alexandria, planning to arrive in Jerusalem by Christmas. Instead they remained in Egypt for nearly a year, leaving for Palestine in the summer of 1832.
Early in 1833 they sailed for Constantinople by way of Cyprus and Rhodes. In November 1833 Fallmerayer finally set foot in the Morea, where the party remained for a month before travelling north to Attica. There Fallmerayer was struck by the preponderance of Arvanitika, an Albanian dialect. The party arrived in Italy in February 1834, and returned to Munich in August of the same year.