Passages from Arabia Deserta

Doughty had reflected his belief throughout his journey and I am not surprised. He decreased the Bedw traditions and tried to link it completely to the teaching of Islam. He knew from the beginning that the Bedw tradition especially in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula has nothing to do with the teaching of Islam. It was basically their culture. He did used the Bedw to serve his purpose since he wrote this book only to the western readers at that time to capture their imagination of the Arabian desert and to lay down the first step toward the colonization period that took place 30 years later. Doughty in his book has described the Bedew life with many details that have shocked me. Since he lived with my great grandfather (Tollog) during his stay on al Harra, I was able to tell how close he was to reflect the real life of my tribe. If we ignore his belief's reflection in his writing, we can conclude that his book is truly a masterpiece in detailing the life of one of the most isolated part of the world in 1800 century.

I must, grudgingly, give this monumental classic work of travel and adventure five stars, despite the fact that I don't really like the author. Doughty was probably not a very nice, friendly person; his life and opinions seem centered around a strict, almost fanatical and unforgiving, religiosity (he was a very fervent christian). Nevertheless, what he set out to do, he did with ample success and eficiency; and what he set out to do is not so simple as it seems at first sight,in my opinion, except for one of his main, but most superficial goals: to redeem the English language from the poverty and oversimplicity it had fallen into (Doughty believed the English language had fallen from grace since Spencer: I wonder, what would he think of it now?). "Travels..." is an account of Doughty's two years of wandering through the Desert, in the 2nd half of the 19th century, with Hejaz and Nejd nomads. Unlike many other travellers before him (such as Sir Richard Burton), he never even tried to pretend he was a muslim, but admited to the nomads he travelled with that he was christian....and then went on, once and again for two years, to argue christianity's superiority over Islam and to explain how the fact that they were muslims excited his pity at seeing them fooled by their fraudulent Islamic beliefs. We know that traveleng in Arabia in those times was quite risky and dangerous, so it is a wonder that he was not killed by the nomads he was travelling with after they had to hear, for the hundredth time, how their faith was a fraud!!! This pious propensity, or even thirst for martyrdom (some times the provocations seem to point at that), is also quite trying for the reader. However, if you can stomach the religious dissertations in his very special saintly style, the reading is rewarding indeed. Doughty had the (undeserved, I think with envy)luck to find the remains of the Nabataean town of Hegra, which he describes in some depth, with sketches of the tombs and copies of the inscriptions he found there. Who doesn't dream of finding the abandoned, lost, ancient town, built by a mysterious half-forgotten people? His descriptions of life with a Nomadic tribe of those times, with its unbelievable hardships, due to the famine-level subsistence usual among nomads, are an etnographic work of first rank. His report of the abuse, threats and indignities he had to suffer at the hands of the nomads because of his refusal to deny his christianity are unintentionally funny, in spite of himself. But it is when we see that Doughty constantly compares the nomads of the desert with the Patriarchs of the Bible, and we know he can imagine himself in the company of Abraham's or Ishmael's tribes, when we learn the extent of the religious significance that this journey had for him. The ignorance and fanaticism that he finds in these nomads, he imagines in the Patriarchs of the Bible. For him Christianity, his own faith, was the light and salvation that took people out of the

After reading this work detailing the 1870s [mis]adventures of the legendary Charles M. Doughty, one comes to understand much better why T.E.Lawrence so admired the Bedu and mistrusted the Arab city dweller. Doughty's "travels" really amounted to being "driven" through hostile lands occupied by "fanatics," continuously handed off from one group of outlaws and thieves to another. "I found in them an implacable fanaticism," wrote Doughty. "All their life is passed in fraud and deceipt." Sacred oaths, swearing in the name of God out of mere habit, traditional mores of protecting the fellow-traveller in one's charge honored mostly in the breach. One friendly Arab acquaintance along the tortured path tells Doughty, "I hope that your life may be preserved: but they will not suffer you to dwell amongst them! You will be driven from place to place. As many among them as have travelled, are liberal; but the rest, no." Abdullah el-Kenneyny advised Doughty, "I am even now in amazement! that in such a country, you openly avow yourself to be an Englishman; but how may you pass even one day in safety. You have lived hitherto with the Bedu; but it is otherwise in the townships." Early on, the strange language seemed humorous and distracting, but it soon grows on you. "Give me a hand" becomes "Lend me a grip of thy five." Robbed, stripped, insulted, the intrepid Doughty gives the evil-doers the back of his hand as often as he dared, many times with his hand on a revolver hidden under his robes. One bluff carried off successfully against fellow travellers, who were sworn, of course, to defend him -- "By the life of Him who created us, in what instant you show me a gun's mouth, I will lay dead your carcasses upon this earth." Occasionally some paragraph seems to be the obvious inspiration for a like passage in Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," an exquisitely detailed description of how a camel comes to a halt and lies down being one of the most obvious examples. A major feature of this work is the great care taken by the author to use and then explain the Arabic vocabulary for places and things unique to the Arab culture. Each and every page is peppered with these terms. There is a fine glossary, praise God, the Merciful One! The first half of this collection of selected passages from the massive original work will give readers warm feelings for the Bedouin and sweet dreams of wandering amongst them at peace with God and nature. The second half will likely wipe out any such urge. Civilizations still clash, 130 years later. Extremists rear their ugly heads on both sides of a vast chasm. Will the next 130 years bring much fundamental change?

There are few travel books that can stand up to the depredations of time - indeed, travel literature by its nature tends to be ephemeral. We may peruse the Victorian travelers, but mainly to get a sense of the exotic, from a time when it still was that way.Fewer travel books still can claim to have had a conscious impact beyond their own genre. One thinks of Stendahl's travels in the South of France, Radishchev's journey from Petersburg to Moscow, or Stephens and Catherwood in the Yucatan. But Doughty is in a class by himself.This remarkably eccentric man with the remarkably eccentric writing style set off into one of the last fringes of society, to a world where the art of the word was cultivated and where a man's worth was set by his speech. He is not an easy read. Yet his writing reflects the sense of a major intellect from one culture confronted by a tradition which is very old, very venerable and yet totally alien from that in which he was raised. That he sought to explain it by creating a new way of writing is perhaps not remarkable.Many writers of the last century have been quite vocal about the debt that they owe him; one sometimes wonders if this is honored more in the breach than we would like to believe. But try him on for size, but be prepared to be patient. You will find that his style will win you over if you are.

Doughty, who had many disciples, including the sphinxlike T.E.Lawrence, wrote in a style which he described as a response to the confines presented by the Victorian language. Lawrence, when composing his great oasis "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," too, offered his own form of revelling, a sort of aversion to the literal strictures of Edwardianism which the former described as "granular." Here, "Travels in Arabia" is instructive, even highly enjoyable; the two-volume set (some of which include maps) is replete with Doughty's self-styled descriptions of the then still-remote middle eastern world as well, what was once considered a great adventure story for the well-read. No, he did not dictate the specifics of the type on the page, but he did manage to produce something to Travel and History as comparable to Fraser's "Golden Bough" was to anthropology; easy to admire but impossible to believe. It is very enjoyable, erudite in its own way and meant to be digested as with Henry James or tea, slowly to fully appreciate. Strongly recommend