This large, beautiful and very rare map of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and the Levant is very likely the most detailed map of Arabia to date.

The map was issued in a map case accompanying Francis Rawdon Chesney’s account of the “Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris”. This expedition was sponsored by the British government for an amount of 20,000 pounds to find out if the Euphrates River would serve as a navigable river between the Gulf and the Mediterranean. It was carried out in the years of 1835-7 although Chesney would not publish his official account until 1850. The accompanying case contained twelve regional maps of the Euphrates River and two general maps of the region. The first general map shows the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire together with Iran and Iraq and is usually included within the volume. This map, focusing specifically on Arabia, Iraq and the Levant, only appears in the case. Examples of the work with the accompanying map case are substantially rarer, suggesting that it was an optional extra, so to speak, probably available for a much higher price.

The map is extremely important for the Arabian Peninsula. There is a distinct adjustment in its shape and several parts of the coastline of Arabia, particularly in the south and the Gulf have been substantially updated. However, the most important developments are in the interior of the Peninsula. Several panels of text refer to detailed academic sources on the topography and political geography of the landscape. For example, there are mentions of divisions within the interior including seven districts in the region of El Yemamah, as well as several references to pilgrim routes and numerous comments about the people, the topography and the ethnic groups within the Peninsula. Many of these divisions, comments, pilgrim routes and settlements are shown on a European map for the first time.

The map was commissioned by Chesney from W. H. Plate, a doctor of law but more importantly, a scholar and high ranking member of the Syro-Egyptian Society of London and a member of the Geographical Society of Paris as well as a member of the Oriental Society of Germany. Fortunately, Plate includes a paragraph below the cartouche where he lists the sources used for the compilation of this map.

For further background information about the sources and the compilation of the map, please see below.

Linen backed. Original colour. [MEAST4734]


Plate states that the Gulf, the Red Sea and the southern coastline are based on the surveys of officers of the Indian Navy. This is a reference to the extraordinary surveys by the Bombay Marine commissioned to facilitate the sailing, routes and safety of British East India ships from Europe, through the Indian Ocean to India. They include the first scientific survey of the Gulf by Captain Guy and George Barnes Brucks of 1819-29; S. B. Haines, initially a collaborator with Brucks, surveyed the southern coast of the Peninsula throughout the 1830s and established the British East India Company Station in Aden. The Bombay Marine had been re-named as the Indian Navy by this time. Finally, the Red Sea was surveyed by Captains Elwon, Moresby and Careless during the same period.

Additionally, Plate mentions Aloys Sprenger M.D. as a provider of further material for the compilation of this map. Sprenger was an Austrian doctor, scholar and orientalist who moved to London having been offered employment by the Earl of Munster. Munster was the President of the Royal Asiatic Society and wanted to write a work on the history and structure of Islamic armies. Sprenger was to assist him in translating and editing various Islamic sources for the project. Upon finishing his service with the Earl, Sprenger gained employment in India as the principal of Delhi College; he was also granted access to the four great libraries of Lucknow and their vast collection of Islamic works and texts which he proceeded to catalogue, study and translate.

Although Chesney’s work was not published until 1850, this map was prepared in 1849. However, there is an earlier printing of this map from 1847, known in only one example held at the British Library. It is unknown if this was a preliminary printing or a proof copy but it shows the same information except that there is a variation on the wording of the title. This earlier map bears the title “Arabia, drawn for Col. Chesney’s work on his Euphrates Expedition”. The paragraph detailing the sources used for the map is omitted, with a simpler: “from European and Oriental sources” in its place. However, it then goes on to state, “among the latter Ibn Khordadbeh”.

Ibn Khordadbeh was a high ranking administrator and geographer of the Abbasid Caliphate. He is the author of the earliest surviving book of Muslim administrative geography written in approximately 870 C.E. It is titled the “The Book of Roads and Kingdoms”. One of the more prominent panels on the map is situated above the pilgrim route between Baghdad and Mecca, stating that the route was made possible by the many wells and reservoirs constructed by Sultan Melek-Shah and Soubeide, wife of Harun-al Rashid. Soubeide was Zubaida bint Ja far ibn al-Mansur, who is now famed as the main driving force for the construction of a series of wells and reservoirs along the Haj route between Mecca and Baghdad. She would have been roughly contemporaneous to Ibn Khordadbeh. His father served the ruling Abbasid Caliph Al Ma’mun, who was Zubaida’s stepson.

There are a few more speculative sources which may have been consulted by Plate for the extraordinary detail on this map. The main being George Forster Sadleir, a career Irish soldier. Sadleir was commissioned as an ensign in 1805 and took part in the unsuccessful South American expeditions of 1806 and 1807 during the Napoleonic War. At the end of 1807, he was sent to India where he spent the rest of his career, travelling throughout the country as well as Iran and the Gulf.

In 1819, now a captain, he was sent on a delicate mission to deliver a sword and a congratulatory message to Ibrahim Ali Pasha, an Ottoman potentate and son to Muhammad Ali Pasha, Ottoman ruler of Egypt. In 1818, Ibrahim had seized Al Derayah, the capital of the Wahabbis, thus ending the first Saudi Kingdom. Sadleir landed in Muscat in 1819 and then spent the next five months travelling through the interior of Arabia attempting to meet Ibrahim. He first went to Hofuf on the Gulf coast in the east, then Al Derayah, the fortress taken by Ibrahim in the interior and finally to Medina, in the west, where he was able to gain an audience with and finally hand over the sword and congratulate Ibrahim on his victory. Sadleir also had two more covert instructions: the first was to convince Ibrahim to launch a campaign against the pirates of the Gulf and the second was to keep a detailed record on the topography, geography and logistical infrastructure of the interior of Arabia. He was unsuccessful in his first instruction and he left Medina, travelling to Jedda on the Red Sea before sailing back to India. This made him the first modern European to complete an east to west crossing of the Peninsula. However, Sadleir did keep meticulous details of his travels as per his second instruction. It is impossible to say if these notes would have become available to members of the Syro-Egyptian Society or the Royal Asiatic Society but these accounts would be exactly the sort of information in which both of these groups would have a great interest. It is also certainly possible that Sprenger gained access to his manuscript accounts in India. A printed version of his travels was finally published posthumously in 1866.

Other more speculative sources which may have been available to Plate include the accounts of the Swiss traveller and scholar, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, the Spanish spy Ali Bey and the French diplomat and traveller Jean Baptiste Rousseau. Burckhardt and Rousseau had already contributed to earlier German commercial maps which were readily available.