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.
