By the 19th century, Levantine and Arabian travel had developed into a science in which experts - Egyptologists, and other archaeologists, Arabists, sociologists, and Biblical scholars -- practiced their respective fields of specialization. In that century European interest in the Levant had crossed the Atlantic with a vengeance. Some 150 American travelers published accounts of their travels in the Levant. The early 20th century saw the rise of a new type of travel-writer; that of the archaeologist/ political officer, whose were part and parcel of British imperial interests.. European and American travel experiences in the Levant and Arabia, as surveyed in this article, being a prototype of a treatise on quest psychology, serve, hopefully, to invite yet further research on the psychology of quest.
Marwan Obeidat, Ibrahim Mumayiz