Primary Sources
Western Travellers in the Islamic World

These texts document the political, diplomatic, commercial, and cultural relations between the Islamic world and the West in the pre-modern period. Some focus on military conflicts, others on peaceful contacts, but all allow us to reconstruct the shifting images and biases in the West, concerning Muslims and the Islamic world, that are still relevant today.

Well known works include those by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (1520/1-1592); Pietro della Valle (1586-1652); J.B. Tavernier (1605-1689); Jean de Thevenot (1633-1667); John Chardin (1643-1713); Cornelis de Bruyn (le Brun; 1652-1726); J.P. de Tournefort (1656-1708); Richard Pococke (1704-1765); James Bruce (1730-1794); and Carsten Niebuhr (1733-1815).

Less often quoted, but equally interesting are the accounts of Palestine of Jewish travellers in the fifteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century; Chandler's Travels in Asia Minor; B.E.A. Rottiers, Itin´raire de Tiflis à Constantinople; and Adolphus Slade's Records of Travel , and several accounts of travel to Afghanistan, Kurdistan, and Central Asia.

This collection will be published in two parts. This first part contains titles previously published in other IDC collections (Early Western Books, Travels, Armenian Sources).

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