Travels in Arabia Deserta

The first of two volumes of Charles Doughty's classic account of travels in Arabia in the late nineteenth century.

Charles Montagu Doughty (Author)

9781108009461, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 June 2010

668 pages, 40 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.7 cm, 0.97 kg

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.

Preface
1. The Peraea
2. The mountains of Edom
3. The haj journeying in Arabia
4. Medain Salih
5. Medain Salih and El-Ally
6. El-Ally, El-Khreyby, Medain
Appendix to ch. 4, 5 and 6
7. Return of the haj
8. The nomad life in the desert
9. Life in the wandering village
10. The nomads in the desert
11. The Fukara wandering as fugitives in another dira
12. Peace in the desert
13. Medain revisited
14. Wandering upon the Harra with the Moahib
15. Nomad life upon the Harra
16. The Aarab forsake the Harra
17. The Moahib summer camp in Wady Thirba
18. The Fukara summering at El-Hejr
19. Teyma
20. The date harvest
21. The Jebel
22. Hayil
Appendix to Volume 1.

Subject Areas: Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]