Travels in Arabia Deserta, Volume 1

by Charles M. Doughty

Western exploration of the Arabian Desert began in the mid-eighteenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century that the British officers of the Indian colonial government undertook surveys of the areas remote from the major pilgrimage routes. Charles Doughty (1843–1926) spent two years among various nomad tribes and wrote in 1888 what would be the first comprehensive Western work on the geography of Arabia, in an attempt, as he says in the preface, to 'set forth faithfully some parcel of the soil of Arabia smelling of sàmn and camels'. His classic and justly famous account is a fantastic piece of travel writing that shows full understanding of the area, the people and all aspects of nomadic life in the desert.

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction, Middle East, Adventure, Travelogue, Islam

668 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1936

About the author

Charles Montagu Doughty

Reviews

[Rozzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very strange. Very strange indeed. For me, that's a compliment. I prefer exploring strangeness to playing nice in domestic normality. And the first impression of strangeness anyone receives with regard to Doughty is from his prose. His writing sounds very much like he never in his life read anything other than Sir Thomas Browne (he of "Urne Buriall" fame) and perhaps Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy". So the first weird desert one has to cross in reading Doughty's book is his language. That's not inappropriate. He actually did penetrate the most secret fastnesses of Arabia, wandering for years around what was then (1888) a vague, impoverished and indeterminate wasteland that for some reason entranced a tiny group of advantaged Englishmen.

Why make the effort? Why expend energy reading such eldritch language? Well, my personal opinion is that his words and syntax add to and support the entirely correct impression of strangeness that Doughty obviously wanted to convey to his readers. Reading this book, one can never not know at every single moment that the subject and object of the book is not only far away physically, but about as far away mentally as it's possible to be on Planet Earth. And I think that in all too many travel books, particularly new ones, the existence of that kind of distance is elided, avoided and/or omitted or, in fact, not even realized or seen or experienced by the idiot traveler writing the book. Which is, of course, a perfectly adequate justification for throwing the book in the trash. The world is most assuredly NOT Epcot.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest books ever written - do not read the abridged version. The language - which finds the language of King James most appropriate to describe (then) contemporary Bedouin life - can only be felt at length, and so can the drama and fear of a man throwing himself completely into another way of life that he knows only from his reading of the Bible. (Note also that Doughty never disguises himself or presents himself as other than a despised Christian to his Arab hosts).
To read both volumes is as much of a life experience as many marriages - and more lengthy than some.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

To begin with, it was a difficult book. Charles M. Doughty wrote in a lierate, but slightly archaic and stilted style. Although it took me 10 days to finish the first volume, Travels in Arabia Deserta in Two Volumes: Volume I and Volume II was well worth reading. As an Anglican clergyman and an unbeliever, Doughty found his life was constantly in danger. The town Arabs and the Bedouin would at one point in kind to him, but then, and re-considering, would threaten to kill him.

It was a miracle that Doughty managed to see as much of the northwest Arabian peninsula as he did. Unlike Richard F. Burton, he made no attempt to go the forbidden cities of Medina and Mecca. The religious fanaticism he met with was fairly steady no matter where he was. At one point, he writes "the open desert is full of old debts for blood"; yet it is amazing how much he saw and how much he noted in his transactions with the Arabs.

At some point, I will also read the second volume. As a result of the first volume, I think I have a better understanding of Arabian culture even as it is today.

[raul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doughty's writing style is often aggressively archaic (compared to contemporaries like Twain & Dickens who I imagine he despised) but he includes some awfully good stories and scenes from 19th century Arabia.... the book despite it's archaic tone is often included in lists of the best travel writing for a reason. Don't know maps are included in the modern edition, but the maps are all important...

[Omar Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharing Sam Schulman's review. Why reinvent the wheel?

One of the greatest books ever written - do not read the abridged version. The language - which finds the language of King James most appropriate to describe (then) contemporary Bedouin life - can only be felt at length, and so can the drama and fear of a man throwing himself completely into another way of life that he knows only from his reading of the Bible. (Note also that Doughty never disguises himself or presents himself as other than a despised Christian to his Arab hosts). 
To read both volumes is as much of a life experience as many marriages - and more lengthy than some.

[Alan Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading a lovely 1930's edition of this two volume 1,000 page+ book, about Doughty's travels in the Gulf region (mainly in what is today Saudi Arabia) in the 1880's. In The Introduction to the edition I am reading T.E. Lawrence (he of Arabia) wrote: "The realism of the book is complete."

This work has a number of outstanding features as described below.

1. Doughty, a committed but tolerant Christian, emerges inspiringly from the text as an exceptionally humane, honest, and brave man. Of course he held, albeit with a huge doses of tolerance and sympathy, the virtually universal views of his time about race and ethnicity, therefore as with all such works of historical ethnography he holds views which would be unacceptable today. But to condemn him now for such views would be absurdly anachronistic. This is an historical text, and with rare exceptions people could not escape the world-view of their time. (Particularly in relation to race, the exceptions are rare. (One notable example is Fanny Trollope, mother of the astoundingly good and now neglected novelist Anthony Trollope, who in describing a visit to North America in the 1820's expresses the then revolutionary view that differences between peoples might be attributable to differences in culture and education.)

2. The book is full of fascinating and immersive circumstantial detail about the lives and cultures of a wide variety of people from different backgrounds, tribes, and ethnicity. After describing a stay in Egypt, the first volume begins with Doughty's participation in the Haj, which he follows with much intriguing adventure so far as Medina (Mecca of course being forbidden to non-Muslims.) He then journeys with the Bedouin, and he vividly describes their marginal way of life (frequently on the verge of starvation), with a fundamental sympathy for their toughness and bravery, notwithstanding the persistent then prevailing internecine raiding and violence. This is a crude summary, as there is a wealth of granular detail describing differences between different personalities, tribes, and demographics. This volume continues (so far as I have read) by describing Doughty's stay in Khaybar, a village settled mainly by freed African slaves, which continues into the second 500+ page volume. An outstanding character who befriends Doughty is Mohammed. He emerges as a man of outstanding bravery, toughness, integrity, and charitable generosity. Mohammed had uncanny ability as a marksman, proven by unerringly accurate target practice with distant shots using a flintlock, attributed to his uncannily shape eyesight. He reports, for example, being able to see three or four of Jupiter's planets, without knowing what they are. (Other claims are of indeterminate reliability, but the planet sightings seem plausible, as there are reports in the relevant modern scientific literature, of people with quite extraordinary acuity of vision.) There are vivid descriptions of the corrupt workings of the Ottoman Empire ("The Dowla" - literally "shade" I believe) which ruled much of the region with the beginnings of competition from Ibn Saud from what is now part of Saudi Arabia. What seems relevant to the modern world is the description of the growing belief in Wahhabism and its influence.

3. Stylistically, Doughty writes in an intriguing and highly eccentric fashion which is full of fascination. On almost every page, and frequently in almost every sentence, he uses archaic language and syntax. It is not in my view that he writes in the style of the King James Bible, a notable feature of which is parataxis, namely the avoidance of subordinate clause, and the frequent use of short sentences and conjunctions, especially "and." (This mimics Hebrew syntax.) On the contrary, Doughty writes long sentences with many subordinate clauses. But the frequent archaisms and strange syntax are both delightful and an obstacle. It is at times a challenge to understand. One can either ignore the archaisms, guessing the meaning from the context, or have a dictionary handy. I will give two tiny examples from one short passage ."Snib" which is the same as "snub" used in a now archaic secondary meaning to mean "rebuke". "Thrill" meaning to penetrate, as by a bullet. Occasionally the language is so archaic or so eccentric that the dictionary fails. You may find this use of language characterful and fun, as I do, or an irritation. There are also many transliterated Arabic expressions, usually explained or glossed once and once only. There is no glossary in the edition I am reading, but there is an excellent map and many drawings and plans. I cannot comment on modern or electronic versions. I conjecture that reading an abbreviated or Bowdlerised version would spoil the fun.

4. A friend of mine who is an Arabist who speaks Arabic, rates this as one of his favourite books - if not his most favourite. If you have liked other material in this genre, I think you will love this. Compared to the obvious example of Wilfred Thesiger, Doughty is less romantic about the Bedouin, and far harder to read, but at least as fascinating in sympathetically portraying ways of life so far removed from most of our own.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often astonishing prose that reads more like the 1600s than the 1800s, and an almost overwhelming level of detail.

[محمد عطبوش · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Semites are like to a man sitting in a cloaca to the eyes, and whose brows touch heaven."

[Lora Shouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange book in many ways. It is an actual memoir, I think, and seems to consist of notes made my Mr. Doughty while he was wandering around in the Middle East sometime in the 1870s. He starts out by accompanying the pilgrims on their way to the Haj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina). They won't allow him to go all the way since he is a Christian, so he stops at a way-station shortly before they reach the part of the journey he is not allowed on. From there he makes several journeys to various archaeological sites (this appears to be something of a hobby of his). Later, when the pilgrims come back, he takes off into the Arabian desert with a tribe of Bedouins and travels around barely surviving with several groups of them for over a year.

The book is filled with interesting tidbits of history, Middle Eastern folklore, and observations of the people he is with. The writing style, however, is kind of disconcerting. In the manner of a diary he jumps from subject to subject with no transition between. The e-book copy I have appears to have been scanned in from an old hard copy of some kind, and some of the letters have not translated well. The e-pages did not match well with the hard-copy pages, so such headings as there were to indicate transitions of subject usually showed up at a different place from where the subject began. Also the opening sentences of many of the paragraphs apparently lost some words in the transformation.

An up-to-date edition of the book would be a wonderful thing, and given the current importance of the Arabs and their kin in the world might even generate some interest. I wonder how the poor Arabs of the 1870s wandering around the desert barely ekeing out a living would compare to today's oil-rich Arabs...

[Stephen Masri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doughty disguised himself as an Arab to venture to Mecca, an unknown and mysterious place to Europeans of his day, braving certain death if discovered.

The publishers of Seven Pillars of Wisdom took issue with T.E. Lawrence on elements of his style, which included a quasi-poetic sentence construction, frequent use of the semi-colon, and sundry archaims. In one edition of that book are included Lawrence's retorts. His style seemed peculiar in the 1920s and seems the more so a century later and one wonders why Lawrence chose thus to recount his story. It falls into place when one reads Doughty: did Lawrence specifically use the same style in homage to his predecessor explorer?

More than an arcane narrator of Victorian exploration, Doughty provides insight into what makes the Arab world different, even to this day. Samuel Huntington would find fodder here.

At the time Doughty set out on his daring journey, which saw him come near death more than once, the Ottoman Empire had long been decadent and its further reaches in a state of anarchy. A caravan journey from Syria to Mecca posed great danger. The Arabs styled themselves as devout and observant, but that did not stop everyone involved in conveying religious pilgrims from extorting and stealing from their charges; these depredations were only less bad than what would be visited on the pilgrims had they ventured unaccompanied among the inhabitants of those lands. Arabia Deserta provides a historical insight into the mutual suspicions and violent emotions that remained a challenge to progress in that part of the world down into Lawrence's time--and after.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carlyle once remarked that “nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran.” I tend to disagree and think this statement could be more accurately applied to Charles M. Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888). Doughty’s language and attitudes are so outdated that they make for very slow reading.

In the blurb on the back of the Dover edition, we read, “…it is his style which makes the book unique: Doughty believed the English language had fallen from grace since Spenser; he set out to restore its beauty through sonorous rhythm and a vocabulary and syntax recalling the Tyndale Bible.” Translated, this means that his language and style, even in 1888, were consciously archaic, filled with high-sounding circumlocutions, and deadly dull.

At the same time, although Doughty clearly loved Arabia and met many worthy people there, he holds both Islam and Muslims, not to mention Judaism and Jews, in contempt. Muslims and Jews alike live in “confused Semitic darkness,” and both are dark, dirty, and pathologically dishonest.

I could only make it through the first of two volumes, and I never would have made it past page 100, had I not put myself in the position of having nothing else to read for ten days. Of books in this genre, one is far better served by reading, say, Richard F. Burton’s Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Mecca (1856).

[Bryn Hammond]

I have a 1927 single volume. A legendary work to me because of T.E. Lawrence. It was his bible on Arabia -- "a bible of its kind" he says in his introduction -- and written, I hear, with the King James Bible in mind, or Spenser. I remember Lawrence said it took the language back to the glory days of Spenser, though he may have exaggerated.

I'm 94 pages into 1300. I haven't found the language as strange as advertised (that may build up) but as Lawrence also says in the intro, "Doughty's completeness is devastating." It moves slowly... I guess that's how he wrote 1300 pages on two years' travel. People don't do that nowadays, do they?

[Mark Heyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent atmospheric read. Doughty is an early explorer of Arabia, and his account is as valuable as Burton's.