Johann Ludwig Burckhardt

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Johann Ludwig Burckhardt as Sheikh Ibrahim. Painting by Sebastian Gutzwiller , around 1830, after a drawing by Henry Salt from February 1817.

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (born November 24, 1784 in Lausanne , † October 15, 1817 in Cairo ) was a Swiss traveler to the Orient. During his stay in the Orient he called himself Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah . He is best known as the rediscoverer of the Nabataean city of Petra and the great temple of Abu Simbel . Less well known, but arguably more important, are his precise and extensive ethnographic records.

Surname

Haus zum Kirschgarten , today's facade facing Elisabethenstrasse
The Ernthalde estate around 1875, watercolor by Samuel Birmann

Burckhardt's baptismal name was Johann Ludwig . He signed his letters to his parents and siblings with Louis or J. Louis , so it seems reasonable to assume that he was called that in the family. In England he called himself John Lewis . On his travels through the Orient he called himself Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah (الشيخ إبراهيم بن عبد الله), and under this name he was buried in Cairo.

His travelogues were published between 1819 and 1831 by the English African Association in English under the name John Lewis Burckhardt . The translations into German appeared from 1820 under the name Johann Ludwig Burckhardt .

Life

origin

The Burckhardt family has lived in Basel since the 16th century , where they quickly became one of the richest and most influential families in the city. Johann Ludwig's father, Johann Rudolf Burckhardt , had a magnificent city palace built for himself in 1775 at the age of only 25, which he called the House of the Cherry Orchards.

In 1794 he bought land above Gelterkinden and had a grand summer residence built at great expense, which he called Ernthalde (Ärntholden). Owning an estate in the upper Basel area was practically good form for the noble Basel families. In addition to the residential building in the style of an Emmental farmhouse, the Ernthalde included outbuildings and stables as well as a small hermitage with a Gothic chapel, pond, footpaths and seating, which was probably inspired by the Arlesheim Ermitage . The facility met with enthusiasm from all of its guests.

The father Johann Rudolf was politically conservative and a bitter opponent of the ideas of the French Revolution and the Helvetic Republic established in its wake - an attitude that was later shared by Johann Ludwig. He made no secret of his anti-republican views and so came into sharp conflict with Peter Ochs . When he was found guilty of treason and convicted, he left the city in 1798 and moved to the Ernthalde. After a political stay abroad, he returned to the Ernthalde after the mediation constitution of 1803 came into force , which remained his residence until his death in 1813.

Childhood and school

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (left behind the tree) playing with his older brother Georg and his younger sister Rosine on the Ernthalde. Watercolor from 1795, painter unknown.

Before they owned the Ernthalde estate, the Burckhardt family spent the summer months with friends on Lake Geneva . Johann Ludwig was born in 1784 as a “holiday child” in Lausanne.

He spent his childhood in Basel in the Haus zum Kirschgarten, the summer months from 1794 on the Ernthalde estate. The stays on the Ernthalde were one of his favorite childhood memories. In 1798 the family moved entirely to the Ernthalde for political reasons.

He received basic school education from a private tutor, as was customary in the noble families of that time. When he entered grammar school in 1799 at the age of 14, he did not attend grammar school in the republican Basel because of his father's political views, but was sent to a boarding school in Neuchâtel , then Prussia .

Studies

Johann Ludwig was very interested in many things, so that for a long time he could not decide on a course of study. It was clear that he would not study in Basel because of the political situation. At the end of 1800 he was sent to Leipzig , which had not yet been occupied by Napoleon. There he took various subjects at the university, including statistics, general history, mathematics and languages. This pursuit of universal education was typical of him and became significant for his later career. At the insistence of his older brother, he also studied law, although he only saw this degree as a stepping stone to a career in the diplomatic service, which he was now beginning to consider. His letters also testify to a lively student life. In 1804 he moved to the University of Göttingen , where he completed his studies.

Stay in England

After a short stay in Basel, he traveled to London in 1805 at the age of 21. Despite top-class letters of recommendation, however, he did not succeed in embarking on a diplomatic career - Great Britain had enough of its own talented young people. At the same time, because of the French continental blockade , financial support from Switzerland only arrived irregularly, so that he found himself in financial need at times and only ate bread and cheese. In his letters he wrote about the strange situation of being in the best of circles during the day and then stealthily buying cheap groceries in a side street in the evening. But he also called this situation an instructive experience.

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt at the age of 24. Frontispiece from Travels in Nubia , after a drawing by Joseph Slater. He probably had his beard grown in preparation for his trip.

After almost two years of unsuccessful job hunting, Burckhardt finally found a job in the form of a research assignment. For the African Association , he was to accompany the so-called Fessan caravan, which transported goods between Egypt and Central Africa. He was supposed to explore the trade route between Cairo and Timbuktu , find out about possible sales markets for English goods and natural resources and generally explore the interior of the still largely unknown continent.

As a preparation - paid for by the African Association - he studied Arabic for a year in Cambridge and attended lectures in astronomy, chemistry, mineralology, botany and medicine. Burckhardt also sought contact with experienced explorers, from whom he took advice.

The travels

The areas that Burckhardt finally traveled, deviating from the original plans, i.e. the Levant , Egypt , the Hejaz and the Sinai , all belonged to the Ottoman Empire at that time .

Aleppo and Damascus

Burckhardt arrived in Aleppo in July 1809 . He gave himself the name Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah , dressed in Arabic and posed as an Indian Muslim traveling for a British trading company. So he could explain his imperfection in language and manners.

It was planned that Burckhardt would spend a year in Aleppo in preparation for the trip to Timbuktu to deepen his knowledge of the language and customs. However, he realized that this time would not be enough, so the African Association allowed him to extend his stay. As a practice, he translated Robinson Crusoe into Arabic, which also enabled him to prove to the African Association that his language studies were making progress. However, he complained that Aleppo is a pure trading city in which there are hardly any educated people who have a correct command of Arabic grammar, which is particularly a hindrance for studying the Koran. He also soon began buying valuable Arabic manuscripts; At the end of his stay in the Orient, his collection comprised over three hundred volumes, which he bequeathed to Cambridge University in his will.

Travel through Syria

Between 1810 and 1812 he made several longer trips through Syria from Aleppo and Damascus , including to Palmyra and the Hauran , which hardly any Europeans had traveled before him. His reports from this region met with great interest in England.

On the journey from Aleppo to Damascus on February 22nd, 1812, in Hama , he discovered a stone with unknown characters. He wrote: “[…] on the corner of a house in the bazaar is a stone with a multitude of small figures and symbols that seem to me to be a kind of hieroglyphic writing; although it is not similar to the Egyptian one. " Burckhardt did not attach any particular importance to these signs, and although he otherwise copied every inscription whenever possible, he did not copy these signs. His casual remark aroused no interest in England; Richard Francis Burton only became interested in these hieroglyphs in 1870 . Today we know that Burckhardt sent the first report on Luwian hieroglyphs to Europe with his remark . The stone is now in the possession of the Istanbul Museum.

Burckhardt first came into contact with Bedouins while traveling through Syria . He gained an insight into a culture that was not only largely unknown in Europe, but of which the sedentary Arabs only had a distorted image. Although he also had negative experiences - he was robbed several times, for example - he felt a great deal of sympathy for the Bedouins. In the description of the Bedouins, Burckhardt shows himself to be a child of his time, despite his enlightened and for his time astonishingly neutral view. In his notes one recognizes echoes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's image of the "noble savage" who has not yet been through the Civilization was corrupted. Even the Wahhabi Bedouin rated Burckhardt basically positive. His Evangelical Reformed upbringing may have played a role here, as Wahhabism essentially corresponds to the Reformation principle of sola scriptura .

From Damascus to Cairo, rediscovery of Petra

The Khazne al-Firaun («Pharaoh's Treasure House») in Petra. Hand-colored photograph, between 1900 and 1914.

On June 18, 1812, Burckhardt set out from Damascus to Cairo, the starting point of the planned trip to Timbuktu. On this trip he discovered the ruins of the Nabataean city of Petra on August 22nd . This discovery was not a coincidence, but Burckhardt searched specifically for the city based on stories from locals and source studies.

Burckhardt describes the discovery of Petra in the following words:

“I was particularly anxious to visit Wady Musa, of whose antiquities I had heard the peasants speak of with great admiration. [...] My guide told me that there were no antiquities in this valley; but the testimony of these people about such things deserves little faith. […] After walking between the rocks for about 20 minutes, we came to a place where the path widens and where the bed of another stream coming from the south joins the Syf. On the side of the vertical rock just opposite the exit of the main part, we saw a hollowed-out tomb, the position and beauty of which must necessarily produce an extraordinary impression on a traveler who, for almost half an hour, on such a dark, almost subterranean path as this described was gone. […] The natives call this monument Kaßr Faraûn or Pharaoh's Castle, and claim that it was the residence of a prince. But it was more like a princely tomb. […] If one compares the passages of the old authors cited in Reland's Palestina, it becomes very likely that the ruins in Wady Musa are those of the old Petra […] »

At this point, Burckhardt also vividly describes the great mistrust with which he was constantly confronted and the danger in which he found himself as a result:

"I regret that I cannot give a very complete report of them. Only I knew the character of the people around. I was without protection in the middle of a desert where no traveler had ever been seen before; and a careful examination of these works of the unbelievers, as they are called, would have aroused the suspicion that I am a magician in search of treasure. At least I would have been stopped, […] but most likely robbed. […] It is very uncomfortable for European travelers that the idea of ​​treasures hidden in the old buildings is so firmly rooted in the souls of the Arabs and Turks. They are not satisfied with guarding the steps and steps of the stranger, but believe that a real magician need only have seen the spot and noted where the treasures lie hidden, of which, in their opinion, he can be found in the books of the unbelievers, who lived in the place has already been informed, in order to subsequently, at his convenience, force the guardian of them to extradite. […] When the traveler takes in the dimensions of a building or a pillar, they are convinced that it is a magical process. Even the most liberal-minded Turks in Syria have the same views. [...] 'Maû Delayl, he has displays of treasures with him', is an expression that I have heard a hundred times. "

So he undertook the multi-day excursion to Petra under the pretext that he had made a vow to sacrifice a goat at Aaron's grave . This is located around four kilometers west of Petra.

First trip to Nubia, Abu Simbel

Burckhardt arrived in Cairo on September 3, 1812. It was planned that he would join the Fessan caravan here for his actual research trip south , which arrived in Cairo every year shortly before the pilgrimage month. But he had to find out that this caravan had been absent for several years due to an epidemic. In order to make good use of the waiting time until the next caravan, Burckhardt decided to follow the Nile south and explore Nubia . The African Association agreed to this plan and promised it the necessary support.

On January 11, 1813, Burckhardt set out on his first trip to Nubia. He followed the right (i.e. eastern) bank of the Nile. Because of various conflicts between the Mamluks and the Pasha of Egypt, he always had to be careful not to be suspected of being a spy for the Pasha. The situation finally became too precarious for him, so he broke off the trip at Kulb and turned back.

On the left the largely exposed large temple of Abu Simbel, on the right the smaller Hathor temple (around 1905)

On the way back he followed the left bank of the Nile. This path led past the famous Hathor Temple at Abu Simbel . While visiting this temple on March 22nd, Burckhardt accidentally discovered the statues of another, much larger temple, almost completely buried in sand. He wrote:

"Since, in my opinion, I believed that I had committed all the antiquities of Eksambal, I was about to climb the sandy side of the mountain on the same path on which I had come down;" Fortunately, when I looked further south, what is still visible of four enormous colossal statues carved out of the rock fell about two hundred paces from the temple in my eyes. They stand in a deep ravine that has been made in the mountain, but it is very regrettable that they are now almost completely buried by the sand, which is blown down here in torrents. The whole head and part of the chest and arms of one of the statues still protrude above the surface; Hardly anything is visible of the next, since the head is broken off and the body is covered with sand up to the shoulders; only the hats of the other two are visible. "

With his description, Burckhardt provided the European world with the first report on the great temple of Abu Simbel . Giovanni Battista Belzoni found the entrance to the temple in 1817 .

Burckhardt reached Esna on April 9, 1813 . From here he wanted to join a caravan for a second trip south. For various reasons, however, several planned caravans were canceled, so that he was stuck in Esna for almost a year. He used the time to add to and revise his travel notes.

Nubia and Hejaz, Mecca and Medina

General plan of Mecca. From Travels in Arabia , after a drawing by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.
The Hajj certificate for Sheikh Ibrahim

In the spring of 1814 Burckhardt finally set out on his second journey south. His destination was the Hejaz , where he wanted to take part in the Hajj , the pilgrimage to Mecca . The African Association had asked him to collect detailed information on the Wahhabis , whose power and influence in the Arabian Peninsula was at its first peak at that time.

The journey first took him to Schandi , one of the largest trading cities in eastern Sudan, where goods from Europe were also traded and where there was also a large slave market. Burckhardt estimated the total number of slaves in Egypt at around 40,000, of which around 2/3 are male. There is hardly a village that does not have at least one or two slaves, and every man of wealth has at least one. Burckhardt described in detail the treatment of slaves, which could be very different depending on their destination.

Burckhardt stayed in Schandi for a whole month to describe the political situation and the flow of trade. He bought himself a 14-year-old slave, on the one hand as a servant, which also improved his social standing, on the other hand this also gave him a justification for his trip, as he could tell that he wanted to sell the slave for a profit. The sword of Damocles, considered a spy, hung over him constantly.

From Shandi he traveled on to Jeddah via Sawakin and the Red Sea . There he was unable to cash a bill of exchange, so he had to sell the slave to get some money. When the Ottoman governor of Jeddah, Mohammed Ali Pasha, learned of Burckhard's presence and his financial problems, he gave him financial support. He had his piety checked by his legal scholars, and after no blemish was found, Burckhardt was allowed to continue his journey to Mecca.

In Mecca Burckhardt carried out the prescribed pilgrimage and received the Hajj certificate as confirmation. He stayed in Mecca for over three months. Even if Ulrich Jasper Seetzen had already made the pilgrimage before him , Burckhardt was the first to deliver a detailed report on the Hajj and the city of Mecca to Europe.

In January 1815, Burckhardt joined a caravan to Medina . There he fell seriously ill, probably from dysentery . The description of Medina was therefore less detailed than that of Mecca, but it was interesting enough, as the city was still largely unknown in Europe at that time. It was not until April that Burckhardt had recovered enough to be able to continue the journey.

Burckhardt had actually planned to make the whole trip by land. After the illness he felt too weak to do so, so he took a ship to Sharm el Sheikh in Yanbu . From here he returned by land to Cairo, which he reached on June 24, 1815.

In Cairo he revised his travel reports. His health recovered only slowly and repeatedly suffered attacks of fever.

Sinai

In February 1816 he had to inform the African Association that the expected caravan from Fezzan had still not arrived. When the plague broke out in Cairo in April 1816, he decided to leave the city and travel to the Sinai Peninsula, because he had observed that the Bedouins were never struck by the plague. He visited the Catherine's Monastery , which he was allowed to enter thanks to a letter of recommendation and where he was interested in the library with its 700 Arabic manuscripts, climbed Mount Sinai and traveled practically the entire coast of the Gulf of Aqaba . He did not visit the city ​​of Aqaba itself, however, as this seemed too dangerous to him in the tense political situation at the time without a letter of recommendation from the Pasha.

Last time in Cairo

The bust of Ramses II in the British Museum

On June 13, 1816, Burckhardt returned to Cairo. In his letters he wrote that he now felt strong enough again to finally fulfill his actual mission, the trip to Timbuktu.

While waiting, he and the English consul general Henry Salt came up with a plan to recover the bust of a colossal statue of Ramses II , which was in Thebes , at their own expense and to donate it to the British Museum in London, where it still stands today. They probably got the idea not least because Napoleon failed to recover this bust in 1798 and so they could inflict at least a symbolic defeat on their archenemy. They commissioned engineer Giovanni Battista Belzoni with the technically challenging task . The Pasha of Egypt was not aware of the value of the statue, so that no obstacles were placed in the way of the company and no fees were charged. In order not to endanger his research trip, Burckhardt made sure that his name was not mentioned in this context.

Burckhardt still waited in vain for the Fessan caravan. In the fall of 1817, however, he learned that a group of Maghreb pilgrims wanted to start their way home from Mecca via Cairo to Fessan. The caravan was expected in Cairo in December, and Burckhardt planned to join it. He expected this trip to take around three years.

death

At the beginning of October 1817 Burckhardt fell ill again, presumably from dysentery , and despite medical care and taking medication, his exhausted body was no longer able to cope with the disease this time. His condition deteriorated noticeably, and on October 15, Burckhardt sent to Henry Salt to confide his final instructions to him. He died the following night. It had been just over eight years since he first arrived in Aleppo in the summer of 1809.

According to his status as a scholar, Hajji and Sheikh, Burckhardt was buried in the cemetery in front of the Bab an-Nasr (the Victory Gate) according to the Islamic rite . What the grave originally looked like is unknown.

Today a modest grave house surrounds the grave, and on the grave stands a stele with the Arabic inscription: «Who will stay alive? This is the grave of the blessed Sheikh Ibrahim son of Abdallah Burckhardt of Lausanne, now at the grace of the Most High God. The date of his birth is the 10th Moharrem of the year 1199 and the date of his death in God in Cairo, the happy, the 6th Dulhigga of the year 1232. In the year 1288 In the name of God, the Most Merciful and Gracious. " The stele was therefore only created 56 years after Burckhardt's death.

Evaluation of his work

Today Johann Ludwig Burckhardt is best known as the rediscoverer of the city of Petra and the great temple of Abu Simbel, but his ethnographic records are far more important and admirable. Burckhardt was not only one of the first Europeans to travel to this area. His descriptions of manners and customs, social structures and the political situation are extremely detailed and precise, they met with great interest from geographers and cartographers, but also from theologians. Even if certain tendencies towards the idealization of the "original" Bedouin culture can be felt, his works stand out clearly from the romantic transfigurations customary at the time. Long before the term existed, Burckhardt used a method that is now called participatory observation . In doing so, he always embedded his experiences in a historical, cultural and political context. His descriptions of the everyday life of the Bedouins found their way into the handbooks of the British secret service until the Second World War.

Burckardt had been warned by explorers in England that he should keep his notes and mappings with the compass in secret, so as not to be suspected of being a foreign spy - which strictly speaking he was, if not in the military, but in an economic sense. This sword of Damocles hung over him during all of his travels, all the more since they repeatedly led him to restless border areas of the Ottoman Empire (Nubia, Hejaz, Aqaba). It is amazing that he was able to produce such detailed and accurate reports under these difficult circumstances.

Burckhardt's relationship to the Orient and Islam

Burckhardt felt a sympathy for the Bedouins, but he never felt at home in the Orient. A longing for the European homeland, landscape and culture speaks from his letters. It was his firm plan to return to England after completing his assignment, to establish himself there professionally and, if possible, to start a family.

This is what Sheikh Ibrahim's tomb might have originally looked like. Oriental cemetery, painting by Rudolf Durheim , around 1855.

There was a lot of discussion about whether Burckhardt died a Muslim, and he is sometimes called "Basel's first Muslim". He has never explicitly commented on it. Perhaps as a believing but enlightened spirit, this question was not so important to him. His firm plan to build a bourgeois existence after his return to England, as well as various remarks in his notes rather indicate that his conversion to Islam was purely opportunistic, as it seemed useful to him for his travels or for the Hajj Mecca was even essential. In relation to Mohammed Ali Pascha's examination of his orthodoxy, he noted: "I flatter myself that the audacity of my behavior towards Tayf has convinced him that I am a genuine proselyte." Concerning his funeral he dictated in his will: "The Turks will seize my corpse, leave it to you."

Honors

A marble monument bust created by Ferdinand Schlöth in 1857 is in the auditorium of the museum on Augustinergasse in Basel.

In 1991 Johann Ludwig Burckhardt was posthumously awarded the Jordanian Order of Independence, Second Class, by the Jordanian Queen Nur al-Hussain . It is on loan from the Burckhardt Family Foundation in the Basel Historical Museum .

Works

Burckhardt wrote his reports to the African Association in English. He had no intention of publishing it himself. His travelogues, his annotated collection of Arabic proverbs and his monograph on the Bedouins and Wahhabis were edited and published on behalf of the African Association between 1819 and 1831. From 1820 his writings appeared in German translation in the Neue Bibliothek series of the most important travel descriptions in Weimar. The first editions are listed below. New editions of some of the works are available.

Frontispiece and title page from Travels in Syria and the Holy Land

English

  • John Lewis Burckhardt: Travels in Nubia , London 1819 (online )
  • John Lewis Burckhardt: Travels in Syria and the Holy Land , London 1822 (online )
  • John Lewis Burckhardt: Travels in Arabia , London 1829 (online )
  • John Lewis Burckhardt: Arabic Proverbs, or the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians , London 1830 (online )
  • John Lewis Burckhardt: Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys , London 1831 (2 volumes) (online vol. 1 vol. 2 )

German

  • Johann Ludwig Burckhardt: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt's Travels in Nubia , Weimar 1820 (online )
  • Johann Ludwig Burckhardt: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt's travels in Syria, Palestine and the area of ​​Mount Sinai , Weimar 1822 (2 volumes) (online )
  • Johann Ludwig Burckhardt: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt's travels in Arabia , Weimar 1830
  • Johann Ludwig Burckhardt: Comments on the Bedouins and Wahaby , Weimar 1831 (online )
  • Johann Ludwig Burckhardt: Arabic proverbs, or the manners and customs of the newer Egyptians , Weimar 1834

literature

Movie

Web links

Commons : Johann Ludwig Burckhardt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Jean Louis Burckhardt  - Sources and full texts

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ This article is largely based on the little book by Gudrun Piller et al .: Scheich Ibrahim, Der Basler Kaufmannssohn Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817) and his travels through the Orient, ed. from the Historisches Museum Basel, Christoph Merian Verlag Basel 2017, ISBN 978-3-85616-853-7
  2. ↑ Sheik Ibrahim, Letters to His Parents and Siblings , ed. v. Carl Burckhardt-Sarasin and Hansrudolf Schwabe-Burckhardt, Basel 1956
  3. ↑ This also corresponds to the usual Basel usage.
  4. ↑ Back then, European travelers to the Orient often gave themselves names in the local language on their travels.
  5. ↑ The official field name is now Ärntholden . That corresponds to the local dialect. In practice, however, most of the time Ernthalde is written. Different spellings were and are in use, with d, t and dt.
  6. ↑ In 1880 the Emmentaler house burned down. Today there is a farm at this point. Today nothing can be seen of the Hermitage.
  7. ↑ So wrote Johann Kaspar Lavater a Ernthalden Song and Johann Michael Bach dedicated a song of his Swiss natural scenes of Ernthalde.
  8. ↑ A detailed history of the Ernthalde can be found in: Erich Buser: Basler- und Gelterkinder-Kirschen, Gelterkinden 2012, self-published without ISBN, pp. 49–80.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Johann Ludwig Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, Palestine and the area of ​​Mount Sinai, Weimar 1822, Volume 1, p. 250. (In the original English p. 146 f.)
  10. ↑ Burckhardt mentions e.g. B. in Remarks on the Bedouins and Wahaby , p. 154 (in the English original vol 1, p. 190) corresponding false descriptions in the work of Laurent d'Arvieux, which he otherwise praised: Les mœurs et coutumes des Arabes du désert, Paris 1717 .
  11. ↑ See z. B. the chapter "General Character" in Comments on the Bedouins and Wahaby , pp. 287-296. (In the English original vol. 1, p. 358 ff.)
  12. ↑ This is Adrianus Reland : Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata , Utrecht 1714.
  13. ↑ a b Quoted from Johann Ludwig Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, Palestine and the area of ​​Mount Sinai, Weimar 1822, Volume 2, pp. 699–717. (In the English original p. 418 ff.)
  14. ↑ Quoted from Johann Ludwig Burckhardt's Reisen in Nubien, Weimar 1820, p. 136. (In the English original p. 90 f.) While in the German translation, according to today's usage , the term caps are rather funny , the English original uses the more neutral term bonnet .
  15. ↑ Gudrun Piller et al., P. 66
  16. ↑ Gudrun Piller et al., P. 52.
  17. ↑ Gudrun Piller et al., P. 69.
  18. ↑ The Basel sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth (1818-1891) - classical beauty and patriotic heroism , ed. v. Tomas Lochman and Stefan Hess , Basel 2004, ISBN 3-905057-20-4 , p. 164 f.
  19. ↑ In the introduction to Travels in Nubia , the editor describes how he edited the texts. Then he arranged the texts, eliminated duplication and corrected linguistic errors. (Burckhardt's English was good, but not flawless.)
  20. ↑ The German translation is correct in terms of content, but neither does justice to the style nor the fine wit of the English original.
  21. ↑ a b This first publication of Burckhardt's texts also contains a 90-page (English) or 120-page (German) foreword by the editor, in which Burckhardt's work is described and appreciated.
personal data
SURNAME Burckhardt, Johann Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burckhardt, John Lewis; Burkhardt, Jean Louis; Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss traveler to the Orient
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1784
PLACE OF BIRTH Lausanne
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 1817
Place of death Cairo