The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Badia y Leblich, Domingo

BADIA Y LEBLICH, Domingo, a Spanish traveller, known as Ali Bey, born in 1776, died near Aleppo in 1818. He learned Arabic at Valencia and London, and under the name of Ali Bey and in the disguise of a Mussulman spent two years (1803-'5) in Morocco on terms of high favor with the emperor. He then made a pilgrimage to Mecca, stopping some time in Tripoli, Cyprus, and Egypt, afterward visiting Jerusalem and prominent places in Syria, and reaching Constantinople in the autumn of 1807. He was there for the first time suspected of not being a real Mussulman. He fled, and returning home in 1809 entered the public service under King Joseph Bonaparte, on whose expulsion he was forced to leave the country. He published an account of his travels at Paris in 1814, under the title Voyages d'Ali Bei en Afrique et en Asie pendant les années 1803 à 1807, in which he described places and things which no Christian before him had seen. Four years later he set out on a second journey to the East, but died soon after his arrival in Syria.