The French-Alsatian geographer Charles Huber (1847–84) achieved fame as one of the 19th century’s great Arabian explorers. On his two heroic journeys between 1880 and 1884, he pioneered the scientific mapping of inland Arabia and made some of the earliest records of ancient North Arabian inscriptions and rock art. His tragic murder in 1884 meant that he published little, and the only connected narrative that he managed to write was of his first journey in 1880–81. This highly significant document of Arabian exploration has not been published since 1885, and is presented here for the first time in English translation. Despite Huber’s great posthumous reputation, almost nothing has been written about him. William Facey’s biographical. introduction fills this void, revealing much that was hitherto unknown about Huber’s complex and risk-taking personality, and about his colourful life as a fervent French patriot coming of age in Strasbourg during a time of Franco-German conflict. New light is shed on the dates and itinerary of Huber’s first Arabian journey, an epic quest of some 5,000 kilometres on camelback requiring immense fortitude. For this he used Ha’il as a base before travelling with the pilgrim caravan to Iraq and thence to Syria. The focus then shifts to his return to Arabia in 1883 with Julius Euting, the eminent German Semitist, and the twists and turns of their unsuccessful collaboration. Having parted company with Euting at the great Nabataean site of Mada’in Salih in the northern Hijaz, Huber went back into central Arabia before making a dangerous journey to Jiddah. He was murdered shortly after, on 29 July 1884, by his guides on the Red Sea coast. Finally, the affair of the Tayma Stele, the celebrated Aramaic inscription now in the Musée du Louvre, comes under the spotlight. In a new analysis of this notorious Franco-German imbroglio, the prevailing idea that Huber first saw it in 1880 is held up to scrutiny, and Euting at last given his due for its discovery in 1884.

In the 1380s and 90s, Nicolo and Antonio Zen journeyed from Venice up the North Atlantic, encountering warrior princes, fighting savage natives and, just possibly, reaching the New World a full century before Columbus. The story of their adventure travelled throughout Europe, from the workshop of the great cartographer Mercator to the court of Elizabeth I. For centuries, the brothers were international celebrities, until, in 1835, the story was denounced as a 'tissue of lies' and the Zens faded into oblivion. Following in their footsteps Andrea di Robilant sets out to discover the truth about the Zen voyages in a journey that takes him from the crumbling Palazzo Zen in Venice to the Orkney Islands, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. Part history, part travelogue, Venetian Navigators is a charming tale of great journeys, fine detective work and faith, against the odds.

Vasco da Gama (?1469–1524) is well known as one of a generation of discoverers, along with Magellan, Cabral, and Columbus. Yet little is known about his life, or about the context within which he ‘discovered’ the all-sea route to India in 1497–99. This book, based on a mass of published and unpublished sources in Portuguese and other languages, delineates Gama’s career and social context, focusing on the delicate balance between ‘career’ and ‘legend’. The book addresses broad questions of myth-building and nationalism, while never losing sight of Gama himself.