About Georg August Wallin
Georg August Wallin (Finnish: Yrjö Aukusti Wallin), also known as Abd al-Wali (Arabic: عبد الولي; 24 October 1811 – 23 October 1852), was a Finland Swede orientalist, explorer and professor at the University of Helsinki, remembered for his journeys across the Arabian Peninsula in the 1840s. He was the first Western scholar to study spoken Arabic systematically, the first European to record Bedouin poetry and dialects in the field, and among the first Europeans to reach several locations in northern Arabia. Internationally he has been ranked among the most capable European explorers of Arabia, and was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1851. Wallin died unexpectedly on 23 October 1852, only three years after his return to Finland and a day before his forty-first birthday. By 1850, Wallin had returned to Europe, where the British 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.
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