Produced by William Thierenspiii TRAVELS IN ARABIACOMPREHENDINGAN ACCOUNT OF THOSE TERRITORIES IN HEDJAZ WHICH THE MOHAMMEDANSREGARDAS SACREDBY THE LATEJOHN LEWIS BURCKHARDTPUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR PROMOTINGTHE DISCOVERY OF THE INTERIOR OF AFRICALONDON  HENRY COLBURN NEW BURLINGTON STREET 1829pv PREFACE OF THE EDITORSOME years have now elapsed since two distinct portions of Burckhardtsworks his Travels in Nubia and Syria were offered to the public andmost favourably received their success being insured not only byinstrinsic merit but by the celebrity of their editor as a scholar andantiquary a traveller and a geographer It must not however beinferred from any delay in publishing the present volume that itscontents are less worthy of notice than those parts which have alreadyproved so interesting and instructive to a multitude of readers It wasalways intended that this Journal and other writings of the samelamented author should issue successively from the press There stillremain says Colonel Leake in his Preface to the Syrian Journal pii manuscripts sufficient to fill two volumes one of these willconsist of his Travels in Arabia which were confined to the Hedjaz orHoly Land of the Muselmans the part least accessible to Christians thefourth volume will contain very copious remarks on the Arabs of theDesert and particularly the Wahabyspvi Respecting the portion now before the reader Colonel Leake inanother place expresses a highly flattering opinion Burckhardt sayshe transmitted to the Association the most accurate and completeaccount of the Hedjaz including the cities of Mekka and Medina whichhas ever been received in Europe His knowledge of the Arabic languageand of Mohammedan manners had enabled him to assume the Muselmancharacter with such success that he resided at Mekka during the wholetime of the pilgrimage and passed through the various ceremonies of theoccasion without the smallest suspicion having arisen as to his realcharacter See the Life of Burckhardt prefixed to his Travels inNubia p lvii 4to edition 1819Recommended so strongly the work of a less eminent traveller would beentitled to our notice this presents itself with another claim for themanuscript Journal was partly corrected and prepared for publication bythe learned editor of Burckhardts former writings But some importantliterary occupations prevented Colonel Leake from superintending theprogress of this volume through the press His plan however has beenalmost invariably adopted by the actual editor particularly inexpressing with scrupulous fidelity the authors sentiments on alloccasions and in retaining without any regard to mere elegance ofstyle or selection of terms his original language wherever analteration was not absolutely necessary to reconcile with our system ofphraseology and grammatical construction certain foreign idioms whichhad crept into his English writings It was thought expedient fromcircumstances of typographical convenience tending to facilitate andexpedite the publication of this volume that the Arabic characterswhich in the original manuscript follow immediately certain words orappear between the lines or in the margin should here be placedtogether at the end as an Index with references to the pages whereinthey occurpvii The map prefixed to this volume might almost appear superfluoussince the positions of Djidda Mekka Medina Tayf and Yembo the chiefplaces of Hedjaz visited by Burckhardt are indicated with accuracy inthe excellent maps that illustrate his Nubian and Syrian Travels But asthe reader of this volume cannot reasonably be supposed to haveconstantly at hand for immediate reference the two former portions ofour authors works a map is here given in the construction anddelineation of which Mr Sydney Hall has attended to every suggestionoffered by the editor at whose recommendation the names of places arespelt after Burckhardts manner however different from that more usualamong us Thus in the map as in the letterpress of this volume Mekkamight have been spelt Mecca and Hejaz Jidda Nejed would as wellexpress the proper sounds of those words as Hedjaz Djidda Nedjed andat the same time approximate more closely to the original Arabicorthography by which our English j as in Jar James c isrepresented without the assistance of a d although the prefixing ofthis letter to the j might prevent a Frenchman from pronouncing it as injour jamais cBy the editors advice also several places situate beyond the Easternlimits of Hedjaz are included in this map since Burckhardt although hedid not visit them himself has given some original itineraries inwhich they are mentionedThat those places do not belong to the region properly denominatedHedjaz is evident but how far this region extends eastward cannoteasily be determined and the same difficulty respecting it occurs invarious directions The editor that he might ascertain by whatboundaries we are justified in supposing Hedjaz to be separated fromother provinces of Arabia consulted a multiplicity of authors bothEuropean and Oriental The result however of his inquiry has notproved satisfactory for to each of the neighbouring countriespviii certain writers have assigned towns stations and districtswhich by others of equal authority are placed in HedjazSuch confusion may partly have arisen from the different statements ofthe number extent and names of divisions comprised within the samespace this being occupied according to European writers by threegreat regions the Stony the Desert and the Happy Arabia whileOriental geographers partition it into two five six seven or moreprovinces under denominations by no means corresponding insignification to the epithets above mentioned which we have borrowedfrom the Greeks and RomansThat it would be a most difficult or scarcely possible task to fixprecisely the limits of each Arabian province is acknowledged by thatexcellent geographer DAnville but he seems disposed to confound theregion comprising Mekka Djidda and Yembo places which as we knoware unequivocally in Hedjaz with Arabia Felix DAnville GéographieAncienne DHerbelôt in one place declares Hedjaz to be ArabiaPetraea See the Bibliothèque Orientale in Hegiaz ou HigiazNomdune province de lArabie que nous appelons Pierreuse cRichardson also in his Arabic and Persian Dictionary explains Hijaz byMecca and the adjacent country Arabia Petraea and DemetriasAlexandrides who translated some portions of Abulfedas Geography intoGreek printed at Vienna 1807 8vo always renders Hedjaz by Greektext and in another he identifies it with Arabia Deserta LesProvinces de Tahama et dIemamah sont comme au coeur du pays celle deHegiaz est devenue la plus célebre