Fifteen Months' Pilgrimage through untrodden tracts of Khuzistan and Persia,

Scarce and sought after first edition of Stocqueler's account of his journey from Muscat up through the Gulf to Basra and beyond to the Bakhtiari Mountains (central part of the Zagros Mountains) in Persia.

In order to evade his debtors in India following the failure of his newspaper in Bombay, Joachim Hayward Stocqueler (1801-1886) fled back to England via Muscat, Persia, and Eastern Europe. After arriving in Muscat and travelling up the Gulf to Basra plans to investigate a potential overland route from the Euphrates was foiled by local wars and disease outbreaks. Stocqueler was forced to traverse through Khuzestan, giving accounts of Sheikhs and peoples he saw, and up through the central Zagros mountains and Bakhtiari country, being one of the first Europeans to do so. He records the lands before the mountains as being 'Chabean' or 'Chab' territory, possibly meaning the Sabians mentioned in the Qur'an. He then went round Persia via Isfahan and Tabriz to get to the Black Sea and through Kurdistan and Armenia, and journeyed through Eastern Europe, meeting exiled Polish general Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki in Linz, before finding his way home. Stocqueler covered much untrod ground in European travels, citing the differences of his journey from Mignan, Kinneir, and Porter.

First edition; 2 vols, 8vo (19 x 12 cm); 2 hand-coloured frontispieces, 1 folding lithograph map, contemporary ownership inscription to front pastedown of vol. 1, touch of spotting to map; full contemporary green morocco, gilt rules and florets to boards, gilt roll to board ends and turn-ins, gilt lettering to spine in four shallow gilt compartments, all edges gilt, upper joint of vol. 1 expertly restored, a fine copy; xii, 263; v, [1], 228 pp.

Wilson, p. 217.