Two years in Arabia Deserta

Charles Doughty · 1876 CE – 1878 CE · Earth

Copy the inscribed Nabataean tombs of Mada’in Salih and see the interior of Arabia as a traveller who would not pass for a Muslim.

Historical context

In 1876 the Ottoman government held the Hajj road and a few oases such as Khaybar, the Rashid emirs of Ha’il ruled Jebel Shammar and its tribes, and a European inland had no protection but hospitality. Doughty wore Arab clothes and went by the name Khalil, but he would not pass for a Muslim: he acknowledged himself a Nasrany, a Christian, whenever he was asked, and for nearly two years lived on the hospitality of Bedouin and townspeople, some of whom thought him worthy of death for the name alone. What he brought back, T. E. Lawrence wrote in 1921, was “the true Arabia, the land with its smells and dirt”.

The voyage, step by step

1. Damascus and Muzeyrib, 13 November 1876

   13 November 1876

   Doughty rides out of Damascus with a Persian camel-master and sets out with the pilgrim caravan from Muzeyrib under the name Khalil.

2. Down the pilgrim road

   1876 CE

   The caravan passes from water-tower to water-tower to Maan, where Doughty is known and the Pasha has him sought.

3. The tombs of al-Hijr

   1876 CE

   The Hajj leaves him at the kella of Medain Salih, where he spends two months impressing the Nabataean epitaphs.

4. Tayma and the great well

   1877 CE

   An oasis watered by one ancient well-pit, round which sixty draw-wheels turn day and night.

5. The court of Ha’il

   1877 CE

   The emir Mohammed ibn Rashid receives him in his castle and, a month later, gives him a safe-conduct and sends him away.

6. Held at Khaybar

   1877 CE

   In the lava country the chief of the Medina soldiery holds him for more than three months while his books go to the Pasha.

7. The merchants of al-Qasim

   1878 CE

   Buraydah robs him and sends him on; Unayzah takes him in, drives him out, recalls him and sends him south with the butter caravan.

8. Ta’if, August 1878

   August 1878

   Saved from a nomad sharif’s knife at ‘Ayn ez-Zeyma and robbed on the road, he is received at Ta’if by the Sharif of Mecca.

Outcome

Reached Jeddah in August 1878, having been twice sent away from Ha’il, detained at Khaybar, driven out of and recalled to Unayzah, and robbed on the road to Ta’if; his squeezes of the Hijr inscriptions had gone home ahead of him with the returning Hajj.

Charles Doughty

English geologist and poet who spent two years wandering northern Arabia with the Bedouin, refusing to call himself a Muslim, and wrote the strangest masterpiece in English travel literature.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Travels in Arabia Deserta, volume 1Charles Montagu Doughty · Cambridge University Press · 1888
• Travels in Arabia Deserta, volume 2 (new edition, same pagination as the first, with the index to both volumes)Charles Montagu Doughty · Philip Lee Warner, publisher to the Medici Society, and Jonathan Cape, London · 1921
• Travels in Arabia Deserta, new edition, volume 1: the author’s prefaces of 1920 and 1921 and the introduction by T. E. LawrenceCharles Montagu Doughty; T. E. Lawrence · Philip Lee Warner, publisher to the Medici Society, and Jonathan Cape, London · 1921
• Charles Montagu Doughty — Wikipedia

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