8vo. Volume I: xv, 334 pp. 44 b/w mainly photographic illustrations, frontispiece with protective film, in text figures, 1 folding map (map of Lebanon) @ pp 32 / Volume II: xiv, 1 bl, 434 pp. 33 b/w plates including a frontispiece, 1 two page plan of Baghdad, 1 folding map (Maskat and Matrah, Oman pp 332), MISSING THE MAPS at rear pocket from both volumes and on page 182 in volume 2, original illustrated cloth, light rubbing to covers, light yellowing of pages, previous owner’s stamp to title pages; copy in very good condition otherwise, index, 1 genealogical table (pp 116 vol.1), published by Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, first edition, 1899-1900.

Synopsis

This work cover his journey at the end of the 19th century through Syria, Iraq and the Gulf.
Max Freiherr von Oppenheim (July 15, 1860, Köln – November 17, 1946, Landshut) was a German ancient historian, and archaeologist, the last of the great amateur archaeological explorers of the Near East. He rendered particularly outstanding services in the archaeological, topographical and ethnographical research of Syria. This is also one of the first description of the Persian Gulf in German speaking literature.
This work is not a a pure travelogue of the German traveller to the Orient, but a description of the land, the Druse and the Bedouins in their historic development, as well as their ethnographic and religious peculiarities. The author set out to the Persian Gulf in 1893.
He was a son of Albert Freiherr von Oppenheim. Abandoning his career in diplomacy, he financed his own excavations at Tell Halaf in 1911-13 and 1929. During World War I, Oppenheim and the Intelligence Bureau for the East and was closely associated with German plans to initiate and support a rebellion in India and in Egypt. From his works in archaeology, he personally owned a large portion of the finds as custom then was, and he hoped that the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, would acquire the material which included some of the most important Neo-Hittite sculptural reliefs. Disappointed in his negotiations, he opened his own museum in an abandoned factory in Berlin in 1930.; consequently, when measures were taken to protect the national collections during World War II, his Halafian material was not included: it was obliterated in a bombing raid in November 1943. Some fragments preserved in East German museum basements were reassembled after the reunification of Germany.