PREFACE

Summary

To the volumes already published at different times, comprising the accounts of Burckhardt's Researches in Nubia, Syria, and Arabia, these now succeed, which will be found to contain, as was originally promised by Colonel Leake (the editor of the Nubian and Syrian Travels), “very copious remarks on the Arabs of the Desert, and particularly the Wahabys.”

These volumes are here divided, after the author's own arrangement, into two parts, serving on many occasions for mutual illustration; yet each, in itself, forming a distinct and independent work; one part being merely descriptive, the other historical.

In the former we find not only an enumeration of the Bedouin tribes, and a statement of their various local establishments, numbers, and military force; but an account of their extraordinary customs, manners, and institutions; of their arts and sciences, dress, arms, and many other particulars relative to that interesting race of Arabs.

In the second portion of this work, Burckhardt has compiled from such original information, both written and oral, as seemed on minute inquiry, most authentic, a history of those Mohammedan sectaries and fierce enthusiasts, the Wahabys; tracing them from their earliest appearance as reformers, in the last century, through all their wars with other Arabs and with the Turks, down to 1816, that year in which he returned from Arabia, the scene of action, to Egypt; where, not long after, a premature death terminated his literary career, and prevented the accomplishment of many important designs: his favourite object being to explore the interior and least-known regions of Africa.