4to. xv, [1], 669 pp., folding engraved map of Syria with the route pursued by Mr Buckingham, in his travels among the Arab tribes on the east of the Jordan, including a great portion of the ancient Auranites or modern Hauran, with the newly ascertained positions in the intermediate districts of Palestine and Syria from the Dead Sea to Aleppo, drawn and engraved by Sidy Hall, 28 chapter head illustrations, advertisement verso last leaf, contemporary half-calf with marbled boards, spine professionally restored. With an appendix, containing a refutation of certain unfounded calumnies industriously circulated against the author of this work, by Mr. Lewis Burckhardt, Mr. William John Bankes, and the Quarterly Review, RCSI Library stamp to title and a couple of other leaves, foxing to endpapers and preliminary leaves, otherwise copy in good condition, printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, London, first edition, 1825.

Synopsis

In 1821 Buckingham published Travels in Palestine, which described the first leg of his voyage overland from Egypt to India in 1816-17 via Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. In the present work, he describes his journey from Nazareth to Aleppo and Damascus, and it also contains an appendix refuting the charges of plagiarism levelled against Travels in Palestine. Buckingham had been travelling extensively in the Middle East from about 1810 as a sea captain and merchant. After he settled in India he established the Calcutta Journal, a publication critical of the East India Company. In 1819, in one of the early issues of the journal, he published an account, together with correspondence, of John Lewis Burckhardt, whom he had met in Cairo during the winter of 1813-14. This was reprinted in Phillips’s New Voyages and Travels, vol. 2, no. 3. In 1823 he was exiled from India, returned to England, and began a long suit for damages against the Company, eventually winning in 1834. His several books were written in an attempt to cover the expenses of these trials. A German translation was published in Weimar in 1827-28 and in Jena in 1834.
Bibliographic references: Blackmer 232; Not in Weber; Tobler, p. 143.