The Orientalists were a breed apart. Amateur enthusiasts with a thirst for adventure, entrepreneurs hunting for eastern treasures, scientists and early anthropologists and individuals desperate to escape the confines of Europe, these men and women were pioneer tourists in unknown lands. They have left us a legacy of fascinating romantic and enlightening insight into the Near East from a European perspective, and Charles Foster brings together a collection of studies of some of the most vivid and memorable of them in this book, which is published in conjunction with the Association for Study of Travellers in Egypt and the Near East. This is a publication generated from papers given in Edinburgh at the 4th ASTENE biennial conference in 2001