Richard Pococke, A description of the East, and some other countries: observations on Palestine or the Holy Land, Syria, Mesopotamia, Cyprus and Candia, Vol. II. Part I, Printed for the author, by W. Bowyer, 1745.
“The Cypriotes are the most subtle and artful people in all the Levant”
Richard Pococke (1704-1765) was an English-born Church of Ireland clergyman, traveller, and antiquarian. He was the son of Richard Pococke, rector of Colmer, Hampshire, and his wife Elizabeth Miles, daughter of clergyman Isaac Milles. He was educated by his grandfather Milles, at his school at Highclere rectory and later in 1720, he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. With his family connections he advanced rapidly in the church, becoming vicar-general of the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore.
At the age of twenty-nine, and therefore considerably older than the norm, Pococke embarked on his first Grand Tour together with his cousin, Jeremiah Milles, from 1733 to 1736. Together they travelled in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary. From 1737 to 1741, he set out on a tour of the East, starting from Egypt, the Holy Land, Crete, Greece, Asia Minor and Cyprus. These travels were later published in his generously illustrated book: “A description of the East, and some other countries: observations on Palestine or the Holy Land, Syria, Mesopotamia, Cyprus and Candia”. Pococke’s work was such a big success that it was translated into French and German.
Pococke, visited Cyprus on the 28th of October 1738 and spend two months exploring thoroughly the island providing valuable information about the Ottoman administration, the customs and traditions of the people: “The women are little superior to their ancestors with regard to their virtue; and as they go unveiled, so they expose themselves in a manner that in these parts is looked on as very indecent.” […] “They retain here the barbarous custom of the other eastern nations of treating their wives as servants; they wait on them at table, and never sit down with them […]”. On natural history of the island: “Cyprus has also been very famous for its minerals, and for many sorts of precious stones, which were probably found in the mines. […], One of those iron mines is about half a day’s journey east north east of Baffa; the other is at Solea, where the is a large hill that seems entirely to conflict of this ore, which is very fine and light, being porous and crumbling, and of a red colour.” […] “There is a surprising number of snakes here, but few of them venomous, except a small kind;”
Pococke, dedicated special chapters to Cyprus and he provided even an illustrated a map of the isasland, plans of the cities of Kiti and Salamis and the text of a Phoenician inscription from the site of ancient Kiti. He was both an insightful and meticulous traveller and a writer, although at times was somewhat lacking literary finesse.
Overall, the modern reader will thoroughly enjoy reading Pococke’s work and find that the vivid illustrations are a window to the past.
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