Brief Biography:
The name of the author of A Journey to Jerusalem in the Year 1669 is unknown. Only the intials T. B. have been preserved. T.D. served as a factor in Aleppo in 1669 for the Levant Company. He was clearly an English citizen and a Protestant. If he were a typical factor, he would have been in his late 20s and unmarried, but there is no direct evidence that this was the case.
Brief Itinerary:
TB's journey to Jerusalem with thirteen other factors from Aleppo
began in May of 1669; April or May was the time when traders often left Aleppo because of the plague.
On Tuesday May 3, the group set sail from Scanderoon, a port city sixty miles west of Aleppo, on the Margaret with Thomas Middleton as the Commander. Poor weather and unfavorable winds prevented them from reaching the port of Tripoli until May 10. After three days of lingering in Tripoli, they went to Coffersinue in the direction of Mt. Lebanon, a town that was a two hours ride away and was inhabited by fellow Christians. On May 14 they proceeded to the small town of Eden, where a group of Maronites lived. The bishop then took them among the Cedars The group returned by horseback to Tripoli on May 16.
On the eighteenth, they set sail for Joppa and because of bad weather once again they had to stop, this time at Aerica, where they saw the tomb of Elisha. They reached Joppa on May 23, and by the next day the company made its way to Ramah. They waited there for a day in need of special permission to enter Jerusalem, because word had reached the area that plague had struck in Aleppo. The group entered Jerusalem on the twenty-fifth through the Joppa Gate by foot, where they needed to get a license to enter the city and to give up all swords and other arms.
For the next ten days, these factors would be in and around the city of Jerusalem viewing what seemed to be each and every location of historical significance to the Christian religion. The group saw hundreds of locations within the city itself, and then went to Bethlehem, Jericho, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea.
On
June 4, the group of factors including T. B.left Jerusalem and the next day reached Ramath, where they
set sail in a small boat and rode along the shore in fear of storms. On the eighth of June, they ported at Aerica
and then sailed to Tripoli. At this
point in the diary, TB doesn't report day-to-day activities, because they stay
in Tripoli and then the mountains west of Aleppo for some time in order to wait
out the plague. They arrive in
Scanderoon on June 26, where he states that many were still dying. Then on July 2, the group makes it back to
Aleppo, even though the plague was still in full force there.
Brief History of the Text:
TB's travel diary
was first printed in 1672 in London three years after his pilgrimage in the
book, A Journey to Jerusalem: or, a relation of the travels of fourteen Englishmen, in the year, 1669.. The book consisted of the diary and a short
preface by Nathaniel Crouch that discussed Palestine and the Holy Land. The printing is attributed to an individual
with the initials T.M. Crouch reprinted
the diary in 1683 in the book, Two
Journeys to Jerusalem, which also contained a travel diary of Henry
Timberlake, a story on the Great Council of Jews in Hungary by Samuel Brett, a
story on a false Messiah in Smyrna, and an introduction on Palestine by
Crouch. This edition was also printed
in London, but the printer is unknown.
This collection by Crouch was printed in both of its forms several times
in the United States and Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. Four locations and times of printings are
known in the United States: Boston 1716, Philadelphia 1794, Poughkeepsie 1794,
and Hartford 1796. Only one other
European edition can be documented, and it was printed in Glasgow in the late
18th Century.