This essay looks at the West's engagement with Syria in the eighteenth century, through the writings of travellers and through the history of the publications they brought back from their travels. It argues that these publications provoked a rethinking of various tropes in the description of the Levant, helping to define attitudes to ruins as well as providing a model for thinking about the customs of the inhabitants of that part of the world. It shows the growing awareness for knowledge about the province. It looks in particular at the place of Palmyra through the writings of Wood and Volney and of Aleppo through the Natural History of Aleppo, written by the Russell brothers, who were both physicians and naturalists and who studied the effects of the plague in Aleppo.

中文翻译：

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知识与如画：十八世纪的叙利亚

本文通过旅行者的著作以及他们从旅行中带回的出版物的历史，探讨了十八世纪西方与叙利亚的接触。文章认为，这些出版物引发了人们对黎凡特描述中各种比喻的重新思考，有助于定义人们对废墟的态度，并为思考该地区居民的习俗提供了一个模型。这表明人们对本省的认识不断增强。它特别通过伍德和沃尔尼的著作来研究巴尔米拉，并通过罗素兄弟撰写的《阿勒颇自然史》来研究阿勒颇，他们既是医生又是博物学家，研究了阿勒颇瘟疫的影响。