Georg August Wallin (also Yrjö Aukusti Wallin, Abd al-Wali; 24 October 1811 – 23 October 1852)[1] was a Finnish orientalist, explorer and professor remembered for his journeys in South-West Asia during the 1840s.
The Finnish translators of Wallin's letters state that Wallin has become a kind of "patron saint of Finnish oriental research". Among other things, the holds its annual meeting on his birthday.[2] Internationally, it has been estimated that Wallin was one of the most capable Europeans to set foot in Arabia. His qualifications have been compared to those of U. J. Seetzen and J. L. Burckhardt, because he has been characterized as an Arabian scholar as the first modern explorer to prepare carefully for his mission, with no intention of leaving anything new to be said to his future. Wallin's notes were detailed, but he did not carry other research tools with him.[3]
Kaj Öhrnberg notes in his book that Wallin's international reputation was at its highest right after his research trips. He was the first to collect Bedouin poetry and make observations of Bedouin dialects; his observations of Arabic phonetics remained important until the 20th century; he was the first to delve into the study of spoken Arabic. Today, however, Wallin has become a footnote to textbooks after research has gone past him.[4]
Wallin was born in the municipality of Sund, Åland, in 1811,[1] and his parents were registrar Israel Wallin (1777–1839) and Johanna Maria Ahrenberg (1779–1854).[5] He attended Cathedral School of Åbo in Turku and moved to Rauma with the school after the Great Fire of Turku in 1827. The following year, however, he dropped out of school and studied privately. In 1829, he enrolled to study Oriental Languages at the University of Helsinki, graduating with an MA in 1836. He then began writing a dissertation about Arabic and Persian, while working as a librarian in the university library.
In 1839, he travelled to St. Petersburg, where he met Sheikh and learned more about the Middle East.
He travelled via Marseille and Alexandria to the in 1843 to Cairo, where he got to know the customs of the Middle East and the rudiments of Islam. He adopted a simple way of life and passed himself off as a Muslim, taking the name Abd al-Wali, to allow him to get closer to his subjects. While many people believe Wallin converted to Islam, there is no proof to support this claim in his diaries and letters, and his writings rather indicate scepticism toward religion. His grave in Hietaniemi cemetery, a Christian cemetery in Helsinki, simply displays his name, Georg Aug. Wallin, with his Arabic name Abd al-Wali in Arabic letters beneath it.
In 1845, he began his first expedition, to visit Mecca, a city forbidden to non-Muslims. This expedition took him from Cairo via Ma'an, Al-Jauf, Jubba and Ha'il to Medina, Mecca and Jeddah, from where he returned to Cairo.
On his second expedition in 1846, he visited Palestine and Syria. His third expedition in 1847 had been intended to explore the Wahhabi region of Najd, but on reaching Ha'il he realized that his identity as a Muslim had been compromised, so he turned north and travelled in Mesopotamia and Persia before returning via Baghdad and Damascus to Cairo in 1849.
By 1850, Wallin had returned to Europe, where the Royal Geographical Society published his Notes taken during a Journey through part of Northern Arabia and awarded him a 25 guinea prize in recognition of his ground-breaking research. Wallin completed his doctoral thesis in 1851 and was subsequently appointed Professor of Oriental Literature at the University of Helsinki.
He was asked by both the Royal and Russian Geographical Societies to mount another expedition to the Middle East, but he declined, perhaps in part due to failing health.
He wrote that he found European culture oppressive and that he "couldn't adapt [him]self to Europe any more". Wallin died unexpectedly on 23 October 1852,[1] only three years after his return to Finland and a day before his forty-first birthday.
Wallin's collected journey writings were published posthumously in the 1860s, edited by S. G. Elmgren. A complete edition of his writings was published in Swedish (partially in translations) during 2010–2017. An English-language and an Arabic-language translation of this edition are being planned.[6]