Past Perfect

John Lewis Burckhardt (1784–1817), born in Switzerland and raised in Germany, was an extraordinary traveler and Orientalist. In the summer of 1806, he traveled to England, where, for two years, he wandered the streets of London in search of employment. He was ultimately hired by the African Association, which was seeking explorers to investigate Arabic Africa; the last six young men employed in that capacity had vanished without a trace. The African Association first sent Burckhardt to Cambridge to study Arabic and medicine, among other subjects. He also prepared himself for the rigors of his travels by wandering bareheaded through the English countryside during a heat wave, subsisting on vegetables and water, and sleeping on the ground.

In 1809 he made his way to Aleppo. There he disguised himself as a Muslim and adopted the name Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah, a façade that allowed him to perfect his Arabic, learn the customs of the Arab world, and enter areas off-limits to non-Muslims. He studied the Koran so diligently that his identity went unchallenged even after a critical examination by learned Muslims. On a trip in 1812 into Jordan, he rediscovered the ruins of Petra.