Knowledge and the Picturesque: Encountering Syria in the Eighteenth Century

This essay looks at the West's engagement with Syria in the eighteenth century, through the writings of travellers and through the history of the publications they brought back from their travels. It argues that these publications provoked a rethinking of various tropes in the description of the Levant, helping to define attitudes to ruins as well as providing a model for thinking about the customs of the inhabitants of that part of the world. It shows the growing awareness for knowledge about the province. It looks in particular at the place of Palmyra through the writings of Wood and Volney and of Aleppo through the Natural History of Aleppo, written by the Russell brothers, who were both physicians and naturalists and who studied the effects of the plague in Aleppo.