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H e rarely embroiders an anecdote to m a k e it m o r e appealing. H e Introduction xi s h o w s that he himself is often confused or uncertain a b o u t w h a t is happening. This reticence partly reflected Thesiger's experience o f travel. U n l i k e m a n y other c o n t e m p o r a r y British travellers, w h o had barely left Britain until they were adults, Thesiger w a s born and lived the first years of his life in A d d i s A b a b a in Ethiopia.
This m a d e him both m o r e comfortable abroad and less liable to be impressed by the superficially exotic. H e had spent m o r e time than his contemporaries living alongside tribal peoples. H e w a s painfully aware o f h o w different they were, h o w difficult to understand and h o w often exoticised or misrepresented. H e w a s c o n v i n c e d that they and n o t his own personality, erudition or prose s h o u l d be the centre of the story.
Thesiger's writing, like his p h o t o g r a p h s , can be precise, artful and elegant. We share in Thesiger's efforts, as a stranger, to judge the virtue o f those he meets. This concern with moral character and reputation m a k e s his encounters into parables: Two days later an old man came into our camp. He was limping, and even by Bedu standards he looked poor. In his belt were two full and six empty cartridge cases, and a dagger in a broken sheath.
The Rashid pressed forward to greet him: 'Welcome Bakhit. Long life to you, uncle. Welcome - welcome a hundred times. The old man lowered himself upon the rug they had spread for him, and ate the dates they set before him, while they hurried to blow up a fire and to make coffee. I thought, 'He looks a proper old beggar. I bet he asks for something. Bin Kabina said to m e : '. Once he was one of the richest men in the tribe, now he has nothing except a few goats. Did raiders take them, or did they die of disease?
His generosity ruined him. N o one ever came to his tents but he killed a camel to feed them. By God, he is generous! Lawrence, w h o w a s over twenty years his senior. Thesiger, however, w a s n o t the only anomaly: he e m b o d i e s a quite separate tradition o f British writing. His first hero of this type had been his first boss, G u y M o o r e , w h o like almost all the men Thesiger referred to obsessively had served in Iraq during the First W o r l d War.
I sent the c o n d o l e n c e s o f the local sheikhs, w h o remembered him fondly, t o his memorial service. Y e t he was not the only n a m e still recalled in the area.
These were competitive m e n. Thesiger often q u o t e d T h o m a s ' s reply to D i x o n : 'I have every intention of being the first m a n to cross the E m p t y Quarter and to live the rest of m y life o n the proceeds.
Thesiger t h o u g h t for o n e m o m e n t that he w o u l d be offered the Introduction xiii chance to succeed T h o m a s as the chief advisor to the Sultan o f O m a n. Thesiger, however, w a s never quite one o f these men and he w a s never offered the j o b. H e hated paperwork and politics, failed his e x a m s and resigned his full-time p o s i t i o n in the Sudan Political Service after only t w o years.
H e had finally to stop his travels in the E m p t y Quarter because the Saudi, O m a n i and even British governments saw him and his c o m p a n i o n s as a dangerous threat to stability and order. Thesiger's overriding interest was in travel for its o w n sake. Lawrence, w h o returned to Britain to w o r k o n their literary m e m o i r s , Thesiger never ceased to travel.
H e w a s perhaps the first to m a k e punishing travel itself rather than government, exploration, k n o w l e d g e or writing his entire v o c a t i o n. H e disguised this by taking o n the title o f the 'last explorer' and insisting that after him there was n o t h i n g left to explore. H e e m p h a s i s e d that he travelled o n f o o t and by camel only because there were n o cars available and that he usually did so in order t o draw up a m a p.
H e w a s dismissive o f people undertaking unnecessarily punishing journeys as stunts. H e claimed to be the last to see a wild world. H e did not have a regular j o b or i n c o m e for the last fifty years o f his life. H e wandered in this w a y for almost forty years because he found that these journeys gave a m e a n i n g and comfort to his life, which he could not convincingly articulate. Rather than being the last Victorian he w a s closer to being the first hippie o n the overland trail.
Thesiger's physical endurance m a k e s Arabian Sands a unique and final witness o f a particular aspect o f Arabic n o m a d i c life. Charles D o u g h t y had lived in the midst of Beduin c o m m u n i t i e s and experienced the slow progress of the Bedu herds, wives and children to and from the oases, their cuisine, their trading and the formal majlis or administration of the sheikhs in their tents. They left their families behind, they followed a route where there w a s n o pasture or trading opportunity, and where they were under i m m i n e n t threat from hostile tribes.
There was a disadvantage to this: Thesiger had a l m o s t n o exposure to the normal migrations of Arabic families, he saw very few w o m e n and almost n o children, and his experience w a s o f the m o s t extreme aspects o f life and landscape. H e had little c o n t a c t with vulnerable groups, w h o might have benefited m o s t from historical change. H e can be naive, superficial and even offensive, such as w h e n in his a u t o b i o g r a p h y he praises the Ethiopian race because 'they had not been mongrelized'.
It is n o t surprising, therefore, that another Etonian explorer, R o b i n H a n b u r y - T e n i s o n , seeing Thesiger's prejudices, aristocratic m a n n e r and suits, should conclude o n their first meeting, like m a n y others, that Thesiger was 'an archaic figure, caught in a time warp, with excessively reactionary views'.
Nevertheless, Thesiger's painful participation in such eccen- Introduction xv tric environments is valuable. H e gains a unique insight into the Bedu's struggle with the desert at its worst, their resilience, their survival skills. A n d his o w n c o n t e m p t for settled civilization and the love o f warfare m a k e s h i m particularly o p e n to their dignity, h o n o u r , pride and j o y in raiding. Thesiger is able to capture w h a t is b o t h admirable and disturbing in bin D u a i l a n ' s disorienting c o m b i n a t i o n o f h o n o u r and cruelty, murder, theft and nobility.
Such projects are based o n admirable intentions and are a l m o s t inevitable. Thesiger, however, saw and c o u l d c o m m u n i c a t e h o w strong, meaningful and c o n s o l i n g the previous culture had often been. H e saw the Beduin not as 'savages but the lineal heirs o f a very ancient civilization, w h o found within the framework o f their society the personal freedom and self-discipline for which they craved'. H e loved them because he believed that they, like him, c o u l d at any time have settled in a richer country but had instead chosen for the sake of their freedom to r e n o u n c e a l m o s t everything.
T h e virtues that they celebrated - courage, strength, generosity - were also the virtues he strove for in his o w n life. H i s c o m p a n i o n s in Arabia repaid the compliment. T h e y did not remember him for Arabian Sands, which they c o u l d n o t read, and they did n o t remember Thesiger's clothes because he dressed like t h e m. But w h e n bin G h a b a i s h a was asked to describe Thesiger fifty years after the trip he said: 'He w a s loyal, generous, and afraid o f nothing.
First, he suggests that there is n o satisfying answer to the question of xvi Introduction w h y w e undertake these journeys; second, that living h u m a n s are o f m o r e interest than landscape, architecture or history; third, that the real challenge is to describe h o w a landscape appears n o t to the visitor but to people w h o have lived in that landscape all their lives. Finally, he s h o w s that the greatest prize is to be, h o w e v e r partially, accepted and respected by y o u r c o m p a n i o n s.
H e remains always a stranger with a different h o m e. But, at certain m o m e n t s , particularly at the end o f m o n t h s o f travel together y o u can sense a shared experience o f courage and generosity. Y o u can feel, if only for an instant, a sense o f equality with those with w h o m y o u travel. This is, I think, what Thesiger meant w h e n he said he travelled for 'comradeship'.
It is troubling that he, perhaps like m a n y o f us, c o u l d find such equality m o r e easily a w a y from h o m e. Thesiger misjudged the future o f the Beduin: contrary to his belief, his c o m p a n i o n s did not deliberately reject all material comfort but instead w o u l d embrace generators and pick-up trucks cheerfully. His tact, concern and patient observation, however, is h u m a n e and revealing. In the fine grain of his account are remarkable insights n o t only into a n alien society, but into m i n d s , modernity and a gradual m o d e s t revelation of h o w he believed a h u m a n life should best be lived.
In Chapter 8, for example, the g r o u p have been travelling for m o r e than a m o n t h , close to starvation, when Musallim catches a hare.
T h e y throw all their remaining flour into the p o t and are all sitting ravenously waiting for it to c o o k , w h e n suddenly three A r a b s appear o n the horizon. It is difficult not to admire the ethics and the self-awareness that underlie Thesiger's description: We greeted them, asked the news, made coffee for them, and then Musallim and bin Kabina dished up the hare and the bread and set it before them, saying with every appearance of sincerity that they were our guests, that God had brought them, that today was a blessed day, and a number of similar remarks.
They asked us to join them but we refused, repeating that they were our guests. I hoped that I did not look as murderous as I felt while I joined the others in assuring them that God had brought them on his auspicious occasion. Introduction xvii It is in these m o m e n t s that we see, n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g his prejudices and limitations, that Thesiger matters, both as a writer and a m a n.
They soon discovered it in enormous quantities, and as a result the life I have described in this book disappeared for ever. Here, as elsewhere in Arabia, the changes which occurred in the space of a decade or two were as great as those which occurred in Britain between the early Middle Ages and the present day.
I was aware before I returned to Oman that considerable changes, both economic and political, had taken place there. In Muhammad al Khalili, the xenophobic Imam of Oman, had died. He was succeeded by his son, Ghalib, but the following year the Omani Sultan, Sayid Said bin Timur, took the opportunity to invade and occupy his domains and to abolish the Imamate.
This caused great resentment and Talib, Ghalib's brother, backed by Sulaiman bin Hamyar of the Bani Riyan and a considerable following, rebelled. After their forces had been defeated in they withdrew into the almost impregnable Jabal al Akhdar; however, the British SAS Regiment, acting on behalf of the Sultan, scaled the mountain and overcame their resistance.
In a rebellion in Dhaufar, instigated and actively supported by the communist regime of the People's Democratic Republic in South Yemen, led to years of fierce fighting in the Jabal Qarra, which was finally suppressed in with the help of British and Persian troops.
Meanwhile, in Qaboos had deposed his reactionary father, Sayid Said bin Timur and, as the new Sultan of 6 Preface Oman, he immediately set about developing and modernizing the country. I was anxious to see the ancient Arab seaport of Muscat which I had not yet visited, to climb the Jabal al Akhdar, the unattainable goal of my last journey in Arabia and, above all, to meet once more the Rashid and Bait Kathir who had accompanied me on my journeys; but I was filled with misgivings at going back.
In this book I have described a journey in disguise through Inner Oman in and I wrote: 'Yet even as I waited for my identity to be discovered I realized that for me the fascination of this journey lay not in seeing this country but in seeing it under these conditions. For the three weeks I was in Oman, aeroplanes, helicopters, cars and even a launch were put at my disposal; during this time I covered distances in an hour that previously had taken weeks.
Salala had been a small Arab village adjoining the Sultan's palace; now it was a town with traffic lights. Bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha met me when I landed. They had been my inseparable companions during the five most memorable years of my life. When I had parted from them in Dubai in they had been young men; now they were the greybearded fathers of grown-up sons. I was deeply moved to meet them again.
I had thought of them so often. They went off next day to prepare a feast for me at their tents in the desert. Meanwhile, old friends from the Bait Kathir, led by Musallim bin Tafl, escorted me in a procession of cars, with blaring horns, up the highway to the new town on the top of Jabal Qarra, where they entertained me in the concrete houses in which they now lived, near the military airfield.
The following day I was flown in a helicopter, accompanied by a television crew, to bin Kab'ina's black tents near Shisur. Here the Rashid were assembled, their Landrovers and other vehicles parked behind the tents. None of them now rode camels, though some still lived in tents and owned camels. Many of them had travelled with me on my journeys to the Hadhramaut, but several of my old Preface 7 companions had died or been killed. Bin Kabina had slaughtered a camel and provided a lavish meal; while we ate the television cameras whirred.
I flew back to Salala in the evening, accompanied by bin Kabirra and bin Ghabaisha, who remained with me while I was in Oman. Together we climbed the Jabal al Akhdar; here, too, was an airfield with jet planes and helicopters landing and taking off. I realized that after all these years and under these changed conditions the relationship between us could never again be as in the past.
They had adjusted themselves to this new Arabian world, something I was unable to do. For me this book remains a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent people.
When I arrived at Abu Dhabi and saw the high-rise buildings and the oil refineries, spread over what had previously been empty desert, the town symbolized all that I hated and rejected: at the time it represented the final disillusionment of my return to Arabia.
On this occasion I found myself reconciled to the inevitable changes which have occurred in the Arabia of today and are typified by the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi is now an impressive modern city, made pleasant in this barren land by avenues of trees and green lawns. I stayed in the Emirates for twelve days and I was deeply moved by the warmth of the welcome and the overwhelming hospitality I received in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Dubai and Sharjah.
Had I done so, I should have kept fuller notes which now would have both helped and hindered me. Seven years after leaving Arabia I showed some photographs I had taken to Graham Watson and he strongly urged me to write a book about the desert. This I refused to do. I realized that it would involve me in much hard work, and I did not wish to settle down in Europe for a couple of years when I could be travelling in countries that interested me.
The following day Graham Watson came to see me again, and this time he brought Mark Longman with him. Now that I have finished it I am grateful to them, for the effort to remember every detail has brought back vividly into my mind the Bedu amongst whom I travelled, and the vast empty land across which I rode on camels for ten thousand miles. I went to Southern Arabia only just in time. Others will go there to study geology and archaeology, the birds and plants and animals, even to study the Arabs themselves, but they will move about in cars and will keep in touch with the outside world by wireless.
They will bring back results far more interesting than mine, but they will never know the spirit of the land nor the greatness of the Arabs. If anyone goes there now looking for the life I led they will not find it, for technicians have been there since, prospecting for oil.
Today the desert where I travelled is scarred with the tracks of lorries and littered with discarded junk imported from Europe and America. While I was with them they had no thought of a world other than their own. They were not ignorant savages; on the contrary, they were the lineal heirs of a very ancient civilization, who found within the framework of their society the personal freedom and self-discipline for which they craved.
Now they are being driven out of the desert into towns where the qualities which once gave them mastery are no longer sufficient. Forces as uncontrollable as the droughts which so often killed them in the past have destroyed the economy of their lives. N o w it is not death but degradation which faces them.
Since leaving Arabia I have travelled among the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, the mountains of Kurdistan and the marshlands of Iraq, drawn always to remote places where cars cannot penetrate and where something of the old ways survive. I have seen some of the most magnificent scenery in the world and I have lived among tribes who are interesting and little known.
None of these places has moved me as did the deserts of Arabia. Tribesmen who had migrated from Arabia to Egypt and elsewhere, and still lived as nomads, were spoken of as Arabs, whereas others who had become cultivators or townsmen were not.
It is in this older sense that I use the word Arab, and not in the sense that the word has acquired recently with the growth of Arab Nationalism, when anyone who speaks Arabic as his mother-tongue is referred to, regardless of his origin, as an Arab.
The Bedu are the nomadic camel-breeding tribes of the Arabian desert. In English they are usually called Beduin, a double plural which they themselves seldom use. I prefer Bedu and have used this word throughout the book. In Arabic, Bedu is plural and Bedui singular, but, for the sake of simplicity, I have used Bedu for both singular and plural. So as not to confuse the reader, I have done the same Foreword 13 with the names of the tribes: Rashid, singular Rashdi; and Awamir, singular Amari.
I have used as few Arabic words as possible. Most of the plants mentioned in the book have no English name and I have called them by their local names in preference to the Latin equivalents; for most people, ghaf is easier to remember than Prosopis spicigera, and as intelligible. At the end of the book is a list of the Arabic and scientific names of all the plants mentioned. Inevitably, this book contains many names which will sound strange to anyone unfamiliar with Arabia.
The maps were specially drawn by K. Jordan, and I am grateful to him for all the care and trouble he has taken. He compiled the large one from those drawn by the Royal Geographical Society from my traverses in Arabia, and used some information derived from Thomas and Philby.
I decided not to correct or amplify this map from work done since I left Arabia. I have tried to simplify as much as possible and have consequently left out the letter ' Ain, usually represented by '.
Only I know what my mother's interest and encouragement have meant to me. In writing this book I owe a great debt of gratitude to Val ffrench Blake. He read the first chapter as soon as it was written, and since then has read the whole typescript, not once, but many times.
My brother Roderic has also read the text with the greatest care and patience and offered many valuable suggestions. To John Verney and Graham Watson I also owe much: John Verney for invaluable advice, and Graham Watson for his faith in the outcome of the task on which he launched me. Thomson of the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names was kind enough to check and approve the spelling of the Arabic names.
I am most thankful to him for doing so. Although it would be pointless to thank them in a book which none of them will ever read, it will be obvious that I owe everything to the Bedu who went with me. Without their help, I could never have travelled in the Empty Quarter. Their comradeship gave me the five happiest years of my life. Prologue A cloud gathers, the rain falls, men live; the cloud disperses without rain, and men and animals die. It is a bitter, desiccated land which knows nothing of gentleness or ease.
Yet men have lived there since earliest times. Elsewhere the winds wipe out their footprints. Men live there because it is the world into which they were born; the life they lead is the life their forefathers led before them; they accept hardships and privations; they know no other way.
Lawrence wrote in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 'Bedouin ways were hard, even for those brought up in them and for strangers terrible: a death in life. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match.
Abyssinia and the Sudan A childhood in Abyssinia is followed by a journey in the Danakil country and service in the Sudan. The opportunity to travel into the Empty Quarter of Arabia comes from a wartime meeting with the head of the Middle East Locust Control. I first realized the hold the desert had upon me when travelling in the Hajaz mountains in the summer of A few months earlier I had been down on the edge of the Empty Quarter.
For a while I had lived with the Bedu a hard and merciless life, during which I was always hungry and usually thirsty.
My companions had been accustomed to this life since birth, but I had been racked by the weariness of long marches through wind-whipped dunes, or across plains where monotony was emphasized by the mirages shimmering through the heat.
There was always the fear of raiding parties to keep us alert and tense, even when we were dazed by lack of sleep. Always our rifles were in our hands and our eyes searching the horizon.
Hunger, thirst, heat, and cold: I had tasted them in full during those six months, and had endured the strain of living among an alien people who made no allowance for weakness. Written by Wilfred Thesiger. Narrated by Laurence Kennedy. Travelling between and , the British explorer treks through Yemen, the Empty Quarter, Oman, and parts of the then Trucial States, crossing and re-crossing around , miles of this most inhospitable terrain.
He was the first European ever to set eyes on the dunes and wadis of these deserts. Faced with constant challenges and trials beneath the punishing sun, his journey is also spiritual and enriching, as it requires the utmost courage, patience, generosity, and humor. In clear and evocative prose, Thesiger documents a journey of unimaginable hardship and startling beauty, as well as a time, place, and people on the cusp of change.
Over the decades, I have doubtless learned more from our readers than they have rom me. And often, their response is not y to add to something I h ve written, but stems f. The customer had already flown in a week prior to inspect the build, and their shipping agent was now picking up the v.
Record-breaking daredevil Maxime Chaya became the first Lebanese to reach the highest peaks of each continent, known as the Seven Summits.
It plans to sell a stake in Administrative Capital for Urban Development, the state company behind the new capital city. East of Cairo, the hitherto unnam. Based in Dubai, w. Lawrence gifted his robes to an army friend called Arthur Russell in the s, but Russell subsequently had to prevent his mother from making dresses out of them Lawrence later posed with his jambiya dagger and robes for publicity photographs, scul.
Thankfully, a few reputed tour operators offer full-day private trips to the gargantuan dese. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1, titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators 1.
Abyssinia and the Sudan 2. Prelude in Dhaufar 3. The sands of Ghanim 4. Secret preparations at Salala 5. The approach to the empty quarter 6. No Bedouin could refuse another something he asked for, even if it should be his only loin cloth. Wilfred Thesiger was born a few centuries too late, given his enterprising spirit and his thirst for the pristine lands, untouched by human development. Theisger was amazed when just from reading the tracks in the sand, the Bedouin could tell not only from what tribe the camel came and whether it was in calf, but 9 times out of ten they knew which particular camel it was.
Between andThesiger represented Oxford at boxing and later became captain of the Oxford boxing team. Arabian Sands Wilfred Thesiger The author traveled there at a time when he knew it would all change. Thesiger has written a fascinating account of a landscape and culture of a people that is long gone.
Spine bruised at head and one corner a little bumped. After being trained as a British secret agent and fighting araboan enemy lines in the SAS during World War II, he set out to explore the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula, the largest sand desert in the world.
The prose is thesigwr and tough, but without brag: The Pleiades are overhead.
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