Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. William Martin Leake's Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor is both an expedition narrative and a learned inquiry into the ancient world. From the outset, it frames Ottoman Asia Minor as a difficult terrain of suspicion, banditry, disease, unstable authority, and fragmentary knowledge, where only careful comparison of modern travel, classical texts, and local geography can recover the outlines of Greek civilization. Leake's purpose is to map the peninsula more accurately, using astronomical observation, naval surveys, itineraries, ruins, inscriptions, and Turkish district names to connect past and present. The journey begins in 1800, with the author and his companions traveling from Constantinople toward Egypt through Bithynia, recording landscapes, villages, ruins, and inscriptions with archaeological alertness. Along the road from Kartal to Ghebse and onward to Kizderwént, he blends vivid scenery—gulfs, marble, waterfalls, vineyards, and fertile valleys—with sharp cultural observation about Ottoman society, Greek survivals, and the burdens of travel and taxation. Scholarly digressions on ancient periploi, the Gulf of Issus, and the passes of Mount Amanus reveal the book's larger aim: to trace ancient routes and place-names through the living landscape of Asia Minor.