Rudolf Strothmann’s Trip to the Middle East (1929/30): Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Anatolia, the Levant, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, and Yemen

Rudolf Strothmann (b. 1877, d. 1960) is primarily known as a pioneer of Šīʿī studies in Western, and German, scholarship. On various occasions, Strothmann travelled to the Middle East. His first trip occurred during the spring of 1913 (January through mid-May) and was spent at the German Protestant Institute of Archeology in Jerusalem. On his way to Jerusalem, he also spent about a month in Cairo. Some sixteen years later, on 18 September 1929, Strothmann embarked on his second trip to the Middle East, in the course of which he travelled to Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Anatolia, the Levant, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, and Yemen. He returned to Hamburg on 10 May 1930, nearly eight months after his departure. The trip is documented in three detailed letters (or Ansichtskarten, as he calls them) that Strothmann sent to Carl Heinrich Becker (b. 1876, d. 1933) on 19 December 1929, 10 March 1930, and 8 May 1930, as well as in Strothmann’s partly extant travel diary. The article provides an edition of Strothmann’s first and second Ansichtskarten to Carl Heinrich Becker, with annotations. In these remarkable documents, Strothmann summarizes his observations during his trip to the Balkans, Anatolia, the Levant, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, and Yemen, with an emphasis on the political situation in these places.