Johann Ludwig Burckhardt

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817) was a Swiss traveller, geographer and orientalist who explored the Middle East and North Africa in the early 19th century on behalf of a British association promoting African exploration. Travelling under the assumed identity of a Muslim scholar named Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah, and writing in French under the name Louis, he became one of the first Europeans in the modern era to visit and describe Petra, the ruined Nabataean city in present-day Jordan, in 1812, and later rediscovered the great rock-cut temples of Abu Simbel in Egypt in 1813. He died in Cairo while preparing to join a planned expedition to the interior of Africa, and his detailed travel accounts, published after his death, became important sources for the geography and society of the regions he visited.