LA SUISSE NOMADE: TROIS VOYAGEURS BÂLOIS
Originally commissioned by Lucien Dällenbach of the E.T.H., Zürich in 1995 as one of four essays for a projected volume on Swiss travelers and explorers that was never realized. The main focus is on Jean-Louis Burckhardt, the pioneer explorer of the Middle East and discoverer of Petra.
This essay was originally commissioned around 1995 for a projected collection of four essays on Swiss travelers and explorers, to be edited by Lucien Dällenbach of the E.T.H. in Zurich. The project fell through but the essay was too long to be published as a scholarly article and too short to make a book, even a small one. It was also, on its own, too specialized. It consists of four parts, The first gives an overview of the various forms of Swiss emigration or residence abroad (as mercenary soldiers, merchants, artists, tutors, etc.), while the other three deal with three travelers from Basel: J.J. Bachofen, Jacob Burckhardt, and — in by far the longest of the four parts — Johann Ludwig or John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817), otherwise known as Sheikh Ibrahim. The discoverer of Petra, the first Westerner to make the Hajd and bring back a detailed description of Mecca and Medina, and an astute observer of the manners and customs of the various peoples of the Nile valley and the Middle East, Burckhardt was buried according to Muslim rites in a cemetery at the gates of Cairo. His many travel reports on Africa and the Middle East, published in English by his employers at the London Society for the Exploration of the Interior Parts of Africa, are still valued and consulted by modern scholars.