Hermann Burchardt

Hermann Burchardt (November 18, 1857 – December 19, 1909) was a German explorer and photographer of Jewish descent, who is renowned for his black and white pictorial essays of scenes in Arabia in the early 20th century.

Burchardt, born in Berlin in 1857 to a Jewish family,[1] gave up his unwanted merchant profession at the age of 30, following the death of his father who left him with a large inheritance.

As an avid traveler Burchardt had photographed extensively not only in the Arabic Middle East (e.g. archaeological sites in Hauran of Syria, etc.

On the third of these extensive travels, in December 1909 he made arrangements to join-up with the Italian vice-consul Marquis Benzoni in Mocha, and to escort him on his journey to Sana'a via Taiz and al-ʿUdayn.

In Burchardt's last missive sent by postcard from Mocha and dated 8 December 1909, he wrote: "This card will reach you from one of the most godforsaken little places in Asia.

The work covers Burchardt's journey over the period of December, 1903 to March, 1904, when he traveled from Basra to Kuwait and on to Bahrain, Hofuf,[10] Qatar, Abu Dhabi,[11] Dubai, Muscat[12] in Oman, and finally Persia.

"[13] Of particular interest is Burchardt's travels to Yemen where he photographed the Jewish communities in Sana'a,[14] in Radāʻ,[15] in Maswār and in Rouda.

[16] Particularly where Yemenite Jewry is concerned, a visually-based ethnography also preserves facts that are forgotten in oral traditions and are not mentioned in written sources.

The results of this work were partly issued in Yemen and the Arab States of the Gulf Coast and reviewed there with great interest.

The National Museum in Sana'a has a small permanent exhibition of black-and-white photographs of the German traveler, Hermann Burchardt.

Max Freiherr von Oppenheim made extensive use of Burchardt's photographic work which he published in his own studies of the Orient.