north. The first
explorer to enter the sacred Hejaz with a definite scientific object was
the Spaniard, Badia y Leblich, who, under the name of Ali Bey and
claiming to be the last representative of the Abbasid Caliphs, arrived
at Jidda in 1807, and performed the pilgrimage to Mecca. Besides giving
to the world the first accurate description of the holy city and the Haj
ceremonies, he was the first to fix the position of Mecca by
astronomical observations, and to describe the physical character of its
surroundings. But the true pioneer of exploration in Hejaz was J.L.
Burckhardt, who had already won a reputation as the discoverer of Petra,
and whose experience of travel in Arab lands and knowledge of Arab life
qualified him to pass as a Moslem, even in the headquarters of Islam.
Burckhardt landed in Jidda in July 1814, when Mehemet Ali had already
driven the Wahhabi invaders out of Hejaz, and was preparing for his
farther advance against their stronghold in Nejd. He first visited Taif
at the invitation of the pasha, thence he proceeded to Mecca, where he
spent three months studying every detail of the topography of the holy
places, and going through all the ceremonies incumbent on a Moslem
pilgrim. In January 1815 he travelled to Medina by the western or coast
route, and arrived there safely but broken in health by the hardships of
the journey. His illness did not, however, prevent his seeing and
recording everything of interest in Medina with the same care as at
Mecca, though it compelled him to cut short the further journey he had
proposed to himself, and to return by Yambu and the sea to Cairo, where
he died only two years later.

His striking successor, Sir Richard Burton, covered nearly the same
ground thirty-eight years afterwards. He, too, travelling as a Moslem
pilgrim, noted the whole ritual of the pilgrimage with the same keen
observation as Burckhardt, and while amplifying somewhat the latter's
description of Medina, confirms the accuracy of his work there and at
Mecca in almost every detail. Burton's topographical descriptions are
fuller, and his march to Mecca from Medina by the eastern route led him
over ground not traversed by any other explorer in Hejaz: this route
leads at first south-east from Medina, and then south across the lava
beds of the Harra, keeping throughout its length on the high plateau
which forms the borderland between Hejaz and Nejd. His original
intention had been after visiting Mecca