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Maundrell, Henry
Brief Biography:
Henry Maundrell was born in 1665 and attended Exeter College,Oxford in 1682. He was seventeen at the time of his entrance. Upon graduation in 1685 he was appointed a fellow of the college, where he would remain until 1689. His uncle, Sir Charles Hedges was a judge of admiralty court, and would later become one of Queen Anne's Secretaries of State. Another uncle, Sir William Hedges, was the director of the bank of England, and previously the head of the Levant Company at Constantinople. Maundrell was elected to the Chaplaincy at the Levant Company's Aleppo factory on December 20th, 1695. His salary was 100 pounds a year, in addition to free room and board, as well as generous gifts from benefactors. His family connections had helped him to secure this position. The community Maundrell lived in was small and secluded, consisting of forty men. He was frustrated during this time, due to personal conflicts, and made no attempt to understand Islam. He was sickly for most of his life, and his appointment to the company may have been a way to escape a romantic entanglement. All factors combined contributed to his distaste for the middle east, and colored his reaction to much of his journey. Maundrell was a protestant cleric during a time when tensions among Catholicism and Protestantism were running high. This was especially true in England. His refusal to stay with the French consul in Jerusalem was a reaction to the persecution of Protestants in France, under the reign of Lois XIV.

Brief Itinerary:
Maundrell and his company set out on Friday, February 26, 1697 from Aleppo. They traveled mostly along the western coast of Syria and Lebanon. Their first major stop was in Latkia, and then they moved on to Tripoli. They went down the coast as far as Acre, and then turned inward towards Jerusalem. After attending Latin Easter celebrations in Jerusalem, Maundrell moved on to Bethlehem and the Dead Sea, returning to Jerusalem a week later. They returned home traveling through Damascus and Baalbeck, returning to the coast once again at Tripoli. From there they followed the path they had taken previously, returning to Aleppo on May 18.

Brief History of the Text:
The Journal was first published in 1703 at Oxford, at the urging of his uncle. The original publication was in English, and was republished in 1707, four years later. The third edition, published in 1714 included an added account, An Account of the Author's Journey to the Banks of the Euphrates at Beer, and to the Country of Mesopotamia. By 1749, seven editions had been printed. It had also been translated into three additional languages: French, Dutch, and German. The book appeared in several collections of travel writings, starting in 1750.