Arabian Sands (Penguin Classics)

This is one of my favorite books. There's something so grand about the scale and ambition of Thesiger's journey to the Arabian desert. His whole life was building up to this point. Born to an English family in Ethiopia, he took an interest in other cultures from an early age. Thesiger set out exploring places not yet known well to the Western world. He wasn't only interested in other cultures, he often admired them. An early exploration of his was to the Danakil in Africa. Along the way he took many great photographs that show people and ways of life before the onset of modernity. Thesiger also served with the British military in Africa during World War II. By the time he set off for the Empty Quarter of Arabia, he was already well acquainted with travelling in places with difficult terrain and alien cultures. In Arabian Sands he dives in to the Empty Quarter for a long period of time. He lives and dines with the nomadic Bedouin inhabitants. He learns about the tribes and their sometimes chaotic way of life. He is throughout this journey still a wealthy Englishman who never joins the tribe. Thesiger remains always an outsider looking in and chronicling a way of life he knows will soon be disappearing. He is often admiring of the Bedouin culture and fascinated by their mores. Even though I read this book many years ago, I remember when he writes about the Bedouin feeling sad when an animal (I can't remember which one) died. He relates how their outpouring of grief in that moment contrasted with their usual stoicism. There are so many fascinating people and scenes in Arabian Sands. It is really a gift to all of us from Thesiger. Whether you agree with Thesiger's opinions or not, his Arabian journey is a window to a place and time that existed in some shape or form for thousands of years but will probably never exist again.

I read this book when I was much younger and no one knew about this man nor much about Arabia. I was invited to be part of a team that would start an airline for the United Arab Emirates, a rather new country (formally the Trucial Coast- tribes that warred against each other and were Bedu and pearl divers). The airline was called Hamarein Air in about 1976 and was started by one little Bedu named Saif Hamarein. He owned small mini marts all over the Emirates, but especially in Ras al Khaima and Sharjah. he raised money from those to buy a 747!I read this book as I started departing from LAX and since the flight was over 27 hours with a stop in Paris and an over night, I finished it.This man, Sir Wilfred Thesiger was remarkable and although only 29 years old, struck off into uncharted lands even the Bedu did not dare cross. He traveled and lived among the tribes of all the areas he charted and learned amazing things from the nations. Because of him today, we learned much about a peoples unknown to the western world. I often wondered what happened to him and since we did not have computers, there was little way to actually look for him. He seemed to have vanished. But on my second time living among the Emirates in the 1990's, they found him in a mud hut in Africa being cared for by an Ethiopian woman and he had satchels of film never processed from his trips in the 1940's! I own 2 of these unpublished photos of his journeys and had the amazing pleasure of meeting my idol at 90+ years old! I cherish my photo with him. He was a remarkable man who did much to bring us the very news about corners of the earth he was later to regret as it brought westernization to the quiet countries and people he adored.

After you read this, you'll never think the same of the "Empty Quarter" which encompasses much of the south of the Arabian Peninsula. First of all, you'll find it's not so empty, with the nomadic Bedu plying the dunes and oases of the region as they have for centuries. In fact, this story is primarily about the Bedu who are incredibly tough but also incredibly principled. Their moral code could teach us a lot. Their love for their camels, who literally enable them to live in their hostile geography, and for their fellow man is humbling. The author, an intrepid explorer of these desert sands, does an outstanding job of bringing the Bedu culture to us. If you want to more fully understand the nomadic Arab mind, you could do much worse than to read this outstanding book.

I had heard this was the definitive work on the desert country but never had gotten around to reading it. I now have and it is terrific - every thing it's cracked up to be. I had read Michael Asher's biography; I had been in Ethiopia, Oman and Yemen; I traveled in the Hadhramaut -- all of this over fifty years later but still there is the flavor of Thesiger's days. His writing of crossing the Empty Quarter was a precursor of Asher's more recent writings about desert travels. He writes well and keeps the reader completely caught up with his trek. There is a sadness, on Thesiger's part (and mine), that as progress has affected the Bedu life, the stability of the old days is no more. But for a loving report on life as it used to be with the Bedu tribes, I whole heartedly recommend Arabian Sands. (I should not Rory Stewart's introduction was worth the price of the book)