8vo. Volume I: xx, 479 pp / Volume II: vi, 538 pp., 27 engraved chapter titles with vignettes as plates, folding engraved map, two double-page lithographed plates, wood-engraved illustrations, contemporary full calf, scuffed and rubbed round edges, index, armourial bookplate of William Cobbett verso front cover of Volume I, spines gilt with red and black labels, scattered spotting, otherwise set in general good condition, Henry Colburn, London, first octavo edition, 1827.

Synopsis

James Silk Buckingham, who was the founder of the Calcutta Journal, Oriental Herald and Colonial Review, The Sphinx and the Argus; and also a social reformer and founder member of the British and Foreign Institute. He had been travelling extensively in the Middle East from about 1810 as a sea captain and merchant. After he settled down in India he established the ‘Calcutta Journal’, a publication critical of the East India Company. In 1819, in one of the early issues of this journal, he published an account, together with correspondence, of John Lewis Burckhardt, whom he had met in Cairo during the winter of 1813-14. In this account he describes his journey from Aleppo to Orfa, Mardin, Diarbakr, Sinjar, Mousul, Nineveh, Kirkuk,
Baghdad and the ruins of Babylon. A detailed description of the city of Baghdad is also given.
Bibliographic references: Atabey 163; Blackmer 233 (for the quarto edition).