Knowledge is Light: Travellers in the Near East [eBook (epub)]

For thousands of years travellers wandered to, and spread out through, Egypt and the Near East, seeking trade, adventure and knowledge. For centuries travellers to - and from - the Near East carried knowledge with them and then carried home the new knowledge acquired in the region. And knowledge, as the Arabic proverb states, is light. The travels which are the subjects of these nine papers continue to represent the work of The Association for the Study of Travel in the Near East, which was set up to follow, study and record the experience of travel and travellers in the Near East. The book features travellers of great character. John Covel was in Constantinople in the 1670s where he became Chaplain and took away in his little-known diaries an extraordinary account of what it was like to be an Englishman in late 17th-century Greece and Asia Minor. James Rennell came to be considered as "one of the first geographers of this or any other age". He spent thirty years researching classical and modern sources on the geography of the Near East, including his splendidly intriguing study of the rate of travel by camels to establish distances.

Introduction (Deborah Manley)
1. John Covel: a Levant Company Chaplain at Constantinople in the 1670s (Lucy Pollard)
2. Depictions of Islam in Seventeenth-Century English Travel Accounts (Anders Ingram)
3. Saved From Pirates (Peta Rée)
4. Willey Reveley and the Greek Revival: A Journey Through Italy, Egypt and Greece in the Years 1785 and 1786 (Patricia Usick)
5. James Rennell and his Scientific World of Observation (Janet Starkey)
6. A Journey Through the Holy Land, 1820 (Deborah Manley)
7. Death and Resurrection: the Renans in Syria (1860-61) (Geoffrey Nash)
8. Theodore Ralli’s Diary on his Travel to Athos (1885) (Maria-Mirka Palioura)
9. Men in Skirts and How to Become Frank (John Chapman)

"Centuries before the gap year and package holiday became cultural staples, Western travellers were making long - and often dangerous - journeys abroad, seeking knowledge, wealth and adventure. This collection of papers by the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East gives a fascinating and deeply personal insight into the activities of these daring proto-tourists... Accessibly written with generous bibliographies for those inspired to read further, this anthology offers a concise, often surprising introduction to a time when the world was a larger and more mysterious place.'"
Carly Hilts
Current World Archaeology, Issue 49 (Sept 2011)