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الوصف
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beschrieben und aussgestanden durch Johann Wilden, Burgern inn Nürnberg ; mit einer Vorrede Herrn Salomon Schweiggers., Very rare first and sole edition of this remarkable travel account by the second confirmed Westerner to enter Mecca, and one of the earliest printed sources on travel in the Arabian Peninsula. Johann Wild's journey as a slave to a Muslim master took him from Cairo to modern-day Yemen: it is one of the earliest descriptions of Western and Southwestern Arabia, including Jeddah, Mecca and Medina. Wild was also the first European to describe the important pilgrim resting stop of Yanbu (cf. Charles Beckingham, "The Arabian Travels of Johann Wild"). - Wild and his Persian master made the Hajj from Cairo in 1606, enduring many hardships along the way. All told, the caravan and supplies of the pilgrims totaled 100,000 camels and was an obvious target for Bedouin bandits and marauders, who pillaged their supplies and killed many of the pilgrims enroute. His account of the journey is rich in detail, describing eg the beggars who pester the pilgrims for water in the Sinai desert and the booths selling jewelry and perfumes he finds in Mecca. After spending 20 days in Mecca, including a description of the ceremonial procession to Mount Arafat, Wild and his master left for Medina to visit the Tomb of the Prophet and then to Jeddah. From Jeddah they sailed to Mocha at the southern tip of Yemen (Wild erroneously believed he had reached Africa!), where Wild describes the resistance of the 'Moors' - probably indigenous Arabs - to the rule of the Pasha of Cairo. - Wild (b. 1585) eventually escaped from slavery and returned to Europe via Istanbul, reaching his hometown of Nurnberg around 1610. The present work includes an engraved portrait of the remarkable author - who had evidently converted to Islam at some stage of his captivity - at the age of just 28, when the book was published. It also contains a woodcut folding map detailing the scope of Wild's journey from Europe to the Arabian Peninsula. - Jews or Christians were traditionally forbidden on pain of death from entering the holy cities of Islam; very few Europeans thus recorded any personal experience of these places in the Early Modern period. The first recorded European to enter Mecca was Ludovico Varthema in 1503, who had disguised himself as a Turkish soldier. Reports by the Frenchman Vincent Leblanc of a visit to Mecca in 1568 are generally dismissed as spurious, as is the manuscript account of the German Emanuel Oertel dated to the 1560s (cf. Beckingham). The next European to visit Mecca after Wild would be the Englishman Joseph Pitts in 1680. - Wild's account is very rare, and is often found incomplete. VD17 shows just 7 complete copies in German libraries, while OCLC shows just 5 copies in American institutions. The last complete copy at German auction was in 1993. A second edition, also rare, was published in 1623. - Invisible repair to verso of map fold. Light foxing and fingersoiling, occasional dog-earing, otherwise a very good copy in a fine restored period binding., Main Heritage Compact General, DS47 .W55 1613, Book, Item-ID: i16875643, BIB-ID: 1510986 |
