Arab's Journey to Colonial Spanish America

In 1905, the Jesuit scholar Antûn Rabbât discovered the writings of Elias al-Mûsili in a Jacobite diocese in Aleppo, Syria. Al-Mûsili, a seventeenth-century Arab and a priest of the Chaldean Church, traveled widely across colonial Spanish America, becoming the first person to visit the Americas from Baghdad. Rabbât transcribed into Arabic and published those portions relating to al-Mûsili’s travels. Acclaimed Middle Eastern historian Farah is the first to make these writings available in English translation.