Första Resa fran Cairo till Arabiska Öknen i April 1845. Fragment. Med en karta

8vo. VII, [1 blank], 126, [2 blank] pp. With a steel-engraved map at the end. It includes printed music for a Bedouin melody and an appendix with Arabic terms and phrases. Contemporary half calf over marbled paper boards (rubbed at extremities, spine worn and with minor losses). On the front flyleaf contemporary ownership entry of John Snellman (1815-1883), Finish senator and relative of renown Johan Vilh. Snellman (1806-1881), statesman and philosopher. A clean copy with occasional toning to pages.

First edition, published posthumously in the original Swedish, of the account of Wallin’s journey through Arabia, covering the wastelands of the Nafud Desert, where he reached Ha il, then continued southward to Medina and Mecca after returning to Egypt. More precisely, Wallin “moved eastwards from Wadi al-Araba, first touching upon the upper regions of Wadi Sirhan, then on to the oasis of Djuf (Algawf) and crossed the central regions of Shammar, via Djobbah (Gubbi), the Great Nefud (Nufood), and Hail. Of Shammar and its inhabitants he provided the fullest account, unsurpassed by later travellers in its scholarly precision” (Henze).

Wallin, a Finnish orientalist, set out for the Middle-East in 1843 under the name of Abd al-Wali and visited Mecca in 1845, several years before Richard Burton. The account was later translated into English (‘Narrative of a Journey from Cairo to Medina and Mecca’) and published in the “Journal of the Royal Geographical Society” in 1854. The English version, however, does not include the appendix with Arabic terms. The work was probably left incomplete as the indication “fragment” seems to suggest.