You have a account from the early 19th century, John Lewis Burckhardt's Travel in Syria and the Holy Land. Why this book?

Burckhardt really was the original Lawrence of Arabia, the Westerner who goes out to the Middle East, studies Arabic, dresses in the local fashion, and travels right through the Arab world. And he came away with a depth of understanding about the people among whom he travelled that was just unsurpassed in its day. Burckhardt was actually preparing himself not to be an Orientalist and Middle Eastern traveller, but to go and try to find the sources of various African rivers – he was fascinated by the origins of the Niger river. He was preparing himself to go into Central Africa but he never actually made it – he went up the Nile and made his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina and then came back to Cairo, where he got ill and died in 1817. So he never fulfilled the objective for which he was learning the language and travelling through the region. But in the process he left behind a couple of fantastic books. One was his travel book, Travel in Syria and the Holy Land, and the other one was a study of the Wahabis in Arabia, from the time of his pilgrimage to Mecca.

And of all the things he describes, what really sticks in your mind?

He is most famous for being the first Westerner to see the Nabatean ruins in Petra. He had discerned that the lost city of Petra might correspond to some places the Bedouin were talking about, and he finally persuaded some of them to lead him there. The Bedouin were very suspicious of anybody trying to visit ruins and old sites, thinking they were seeking gold or treasure or that they might be necromancers: Burckhardt was often suspected of raising the dead, because of his interest in travelling among ruins. And so his is a very quickly sketched description of Petra, because his guides took him to see it, showed him the place and then quickly frogmarched him out again. But I think that stands as one of the most famous passages in his travels. For me, what's interesting are the reflections on the Arab societies in which he moved: this is someone who could talk to the people, who really came to grips with the politics of the local society. There's a sophistication of knowledge and engagement that came from travelling, from living among people for a long time, from speaking their language, which makes him stand out above many of the other Western travellers of his generation