User:David Kernow/Georg August Wallin

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Georg (George) August Wallin (Yrjö Aukusti Wallin, aka Abd al-Wali; October 24, 1811 – October 23, 1852) was a Scandinavian orientalist, explorer and professor remembered for his journeys in the Middle East during the 1840s.

Wallin was born in the municipality of Sund on the Baltic island of Åland in 1811. In 1829 he enrolled to study Oriental Languages at the University of Helsinki, graduating with an MA in 1836. He then began writing a dissertation about Arabic and Persian, while working as a librarian in the university library.

In 1839 he travelled to St. Petersburg, where he met Sheikh Muhammad Sayyad al-Tantawi and learned more about the Middle East. He made his first expedition to the area in 1843, his dark features and assumed name Abd al-Wali helping him pass for a central Asian. This subterfuge allowed him to visit Mecca in 1845, a city otherwise forbidden to non-Muslims. Between 1846 and 1848 he visited Palestine and Persia. During this time he may have adopted Islam, although his writings indicate skepticism toward religion.

By 1850 Wallin had returned to Europe, where the Royal Geographical Society published his Notes taken during a Journey through part of Northern Arabia and awarded him its Founder's Medal in recognition of his ground-breaking research. Wallin completed his doctoral thesis in 1851 and was subsequently appointed Professor of Oriental Literature at the University of Helsinki.

He was asked by both the Royal and Russian Geographical Societies to mount another expedition to the Middle East, but declined, perhaps in part due to failing health. One speculation was that he had contracted a venereal disease such as syphilis during his travels. He also wrote that he found European culture oppressive and that he "couldn't adapt [him]self to Europe any more". Whatever the cause, Wallin died on October 23, 1852, only three years after his return to Finland and a day before his fifty-first birthday.

[edit] Bibliography

  • William R. Mead, G. A. Wallin and the Royal Geographical Society, Studia Orientalia 23, 1958.
  • Georg Wallin
    • Notes taken during a Journey through part of Northern Arabia, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 20, 1851.
    • Narrative of a Journey from Cairo to Medina and Mecca, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24, 1854.
    • Narrative of a Journey from Cairo to Jerusalem, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 25, 1855.
      • Reprinted in Travels in Arabia, New York: Oleander Press, 1979.



George Augustus Wallin was born in the year 1811. It was already in its youth convinced of the fact that its appointment was the study of the Arab peninsula. It wrote a doctor work in latin over the "main differences between classical and modern Arab" and received then a scholarship for a comparative study of the Arab dialects. It was decided to spend itself as physician and the inoculation medical profession and spent then further six months, in order to learn these talents. In January 1844 it arrived at Cairo, where it remained one year, in order to study Kalligraphie and theology. It played also the Arab flute and learned the Koran to rezitieren. Wallin participated in theology courses to the aluminium-Azhar, where Léon Roches got four years before its Fatwa presented. In Cairo Wallin is to have been aside taken by the Egyptian external office, which is to have financed its journey in the inside of Arabia. In response it should report to this there after its return on the political developments. As cover it accepted then however contrary to its training as an inoculation physician the role horse dealers. It did not have difficulty to go through as a Muslim was a with the utmost care observer and developed a exzellente technology to note remarks without thereby to be observed. It was interested in everything, master politics, old inscriptions, topography, Botanik etc.. Unfortunately exist only two articles of Wallin, which are available in English. There is two articles, which pure fact lists represent and no local color or exciting experiences darbieten. Although Seetzen was the first European, who reported on aluminium-Dschof, George Augustus Wallin was the first European, who actually reached the area. The scholar Wallin had been born from the origin and native language Swede, but in Finland, which belonged at that time still to tsarist Russia. This moving European scholar undertook two journeys to north Arabia, the first in the year 1261 h/1845 and the second 1264 h/1847-48 and impressed the scholarly circles of Europe with its extensive knowledge of Arabia. In its report on a journey it was received on such different topics such as master migrations, master relations, old history, the native government and administration, agriculture, irrigation, archaeology and places of archaeological interest.

It left in April 1845 of two Beduinen accompanies Cairo. After it had crossed the Sinai and two months in Maan near the dead sea had spent, it rode on straight way in eastern direction by the Syrian desert to the wells of Waisat, and then in the Dschof, the gate to the Nefud, the red desert, which protected Arabia in the north forwards ungebetenen visitors. Wallin admired in particular the inhabitants of the aluminium-Dschof (which it visited 1261 h/1845), and praised their hospitality and good manners.

On 1 September 1845 it began with the crossing of the Nefud. At day their route characterized by two pyramids from stones and rock, the mountain points were by C Alam. At the night they followed a leader, who "the polar star on its left schulterblatt" [ i ] kept fixed. On the tenth day, nearly dehydrogenated and at the Verdursten, they reached the wells of Dschubba. A few days' marches behind it lay Hayil, which was surrounded by kornfeldern and vegetable gardens and was protected by the Dschebel of Schammar mountains surrounding it. It was a prospering, prosperierendes and safe area, and his ruler Abdullah ibn Raschid was respected in far periphery. He spent two filled out months in Hayil, but determined that it was impossible to implement its original intention after Riyad further to move, because the route was uncertain and was missing it the money. Although he was he the view that it would be "kindische vanity", to go to Mekka decided he, to follow and down to the Medina pre-aged coast go a caravan from Persian Pilgern. When Wallin had then arrived before Mekka, he felt ill and was too poor, in order to leave its Persian comrades, and so he went with them, in order to accomplish the Hadsch. It felt the schiitischen Pilger as "toelpelhaft and unpleasantly", and was glad to be able to separate into Mekka from its society. A few days later it entered Dschidda with only a Schilling in the bag.

Wallin returned to Cairo and resumed its studies. Three years later it concerned again at the coast of the Red Sea, exactly south the Sinai. It landed Red sea Sea in February 1848 in the Muwailih and crossed the Hedschas mountains to Tabuk in the northwest of the Subkontinents. Here it moved two months in still by no European bereisten the area. In its lining as horse dealers it went to far to Taima to the edge of the wahhabitischen sphere of influence, in order to be the first European, who set the foot into the wahhabiti sche territory. On the way after Hayil it followed a half dozen other horse dealers. Its crossing of northwest Arabia was a pioneer achievement. Wallin was always anxious to never harm its generous hosts by eating too much from its limited food and gave away in response small present ones at coffee and tobacco. It could not reach also this time Riyad, since it probably deliberate member of the Ibn Raschids warned it that it was suspected, to be a Christian. Hasty it followed a travel's group, which went to east and northeast over Maschhad Ali to Bagdad. When it reached Basra, it had no more Pfennig. "I had to avoid Begehrlichkeiten, malfunction to me fruits and candles, carry dirty clothes or wash these without soap... I found my only pleasure in the complaints of dissatisfied Persian poets." [ ii ] Finally it was saved of the British Royal Navy and helped it to return to Cairo. It gave its project up to bereisen Yemen. it turned 1850 to the Helsingfors (Helsinki) university as a professor for eastern languages back. Two years later, than he planned a straight further attendance in Arabia, it died. Certainly Wallin belongs to the largest discoverer the Arab peninsula.