Arabia Felix

by Thorkild Hansen

  Then came the Danish Bishop Münter. This remarkable and tireless poly-historian was born in the same year that the Danish expedition left Copenhagen, and grew up to be a great admirer of Niebuhr. He applied himself to Niebuhr’s papers and pointed out two things about them. First, that the last two of the three columns must have the same text as the first; and that as the latter had far fewer signs than the others, it probably meant that it was written in Old Persian. Secondly, he isolated all the instances in the three columns where one particular group of cuneiform characters occurred, which in all probability meant “king.”

  This was the first step forward. It was now clear where the names of the kings should be looked for in the texts, and as many of these names were known in advance, it made the work much easier for Münter’s successor, the German orientalist and philologist Grotefend. He was soon convinced that Niebuhr’s inscriptions must have derived from two kings who were father and son. By trial and error he found that the signs used in the two names agreed perfectly if one assumed that the memorials were to Darius I and Xerxes. In the year 1802 he deciphered the symbols that figured in the two names.

  Niebuhr’s copies of the inscriptions at Persepolis. On the basis of these papers Rasmus Rask completed his interpretation of the cuneiform alphabet

  This was another step forward, but then came the man with the seven-league boots. Rasmus Kristian Rask went his own way as usual. He was cast in the same mould as Niebuhr, but with the dimensions of genius. He had been in the east, and had seen cuneiform writing for himself in Persia and elsewhere. He was not interested in fiddling about with kings’ names and other guess-work; he was a grammarian. In 1826 he published a dissertation in Danish with the title Om Zendsprogets og Zendavestas Ælde og Ægthed (Concerning the Age and Authenticity of the Zend language and the Zend-Avesta). In this he indicated all the places in Niebuhr’s Old Persian columns where there was a genitive plural and showed how all these words must necessarily have had the ending “-anam.” With this, Rasmus Rask got on the trail of the two important letters “m” and “n,” which all the other scholars had tried in vain to identify. This genitive-plural was epoch-making. The rest followed. The mystery of the cuneiform script was solved. Two men, both from the same small country, had given back to mankind one of its oldest languages.

  Carsten Niebuhr is of course silent on this point. Most of these discoveries were not made until after his death. When, on 7th April, 1765, he left the village of Merdast and with his damaged eyes looked for the last time at Persepolis lying in the sun, he hardly dared think he would succeed in getting back to Copenhagen with his papers.

  4

  In Shiraz he had time to recover from his exertions. Because of the unrest in the country, caravans went only infrequently to Bushire and Niebuhr had over a month to recover from the bad eye inflammation which was the result of his work at Persepolis. After three weeks he could once more venture outside a little, and he set to work on his account of Shiraz with its mountain vines and its rose-water and its shady gardens. Because of his eyes, he waited until after sunset to leave the house. The wind rustled in the tops of the plane-trees and a few drops of rain fell on the earth. It was spring again; and in just such surroundings there once sat a man who was also an astronomer and mathematician and who wrote verses about wine and the dark night:

  Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!

  That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!

  The Nightingale that in the branches sang,

  Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

  But Carsten Niebuhr was not interested in poetry, and does not mention the name of Omar Khayyám. He had other things to occupy him. By 14th May, enough travellers had assembled for a caravan to make the journey to Bushire. Once more they went east through the mountains, and when they came down to the coastal plain the heat was so great that, as in the Yemen, they had to travel at night. Niebuhr welcomed the change because of his eyes. With the sun gone, he now rode beneath shooting stars, by zodiacal light and surrounded by phosphorescent insects. But it did not hurt his eyes to look at these; he writes in his diary: “On 28th May I arrived in Bushire, ill and exhausted, but happy nevertheless.”

  The heat in the lowlands sapped his strength. The journey had caused the eye inflammation to break out again, and he was anxious to get away from Bushire. On the same day that he arrived in the town he learnt that an English ship going to Basra was lying ready to sail in the harbour. Unfortunately, the rest of the caravan with his baggage and papers did not arrive until the following day, by which time the English ship had sailed. Instead, Niebuhr succeeded in getting a berth on a little Dutch vessel bound for the island of Kharg, where he hoped to catch up with the English ship. On 31st May they reached the island. A customs official shrugged his shoulders. The English ship had sailed an hour ago.

  This misfortune cost Niebuhr two months’ involuntary stay at Kharg in the hottest part of summer. Because of the war at sea between the Persians and an Arab sheik, the surrounding waters were so unsafe that ships going to Basra had had to seek another route. At the beginning of July an Indian ship put in and the captain offered Niebuhr a free trip to Basra; but as the captain wanted to weigh anchor in half an hour, and as Niebuhr preferred to sail up the Euphrates on a smaller vessel so that he could note the villages along its banks, he declined the Indian’s offer with thanks. Three days later, he learnt that shortly after leaving Kharg the ship had been captured by the Persian despot, Sheik Soleiman.

  Once more Niebuhr had been within inches of catastrophe, and the situation was not safe even yet. The Persian Gulf’s dreaded warm and humid south wind now began to blow. Even though Niebuhr slept out on his roof terrace, every morning his sheets were so wet that he had to wring them out before hanging them up to dry. Day after day he scanned the horizon; the conflict between the Persians and the Arab sheik had died down, but still no ships came. At last, on 31st July, he was able to get on a little ship to Basra. The wind continued to blow from the south and it took only two days to reach the mouth of the Euphrates. Then began the sweet and leisurely river trip between the extensive date plantations on both banks, protected against flooding by high embankments. As in Egypt, Niebuhr tried to find out the name of every single village they passed. On the stretch from the Persian Gulf up to Basra alone his map has no less than ninety-two villages marked on it, and every name is given in European as well as Arabic script.

  Niebuhr now arrived in the humid hell of Basra. It was the filthiest town he had seen in the Orient. He describes how the sewers ran straight out into the street, how men and camels who had collapsed and died of sun-stroke were not carted away until the stench became offensive, how billions of flies buzzed around all this and then settled on lips and eyes. Niebuhr was not on a tourist trip, however, and he had his work to do. He wrote up the more recent history of the town, made a careful map of its streets, counted no less than seventy-three different districts and gave their names in European and Arabic script. He then turned to the town’s trade, the twenty-five different sorts of dates and their names, shipping on the Euphrates, and the town’s fortress. This was not work that could be got through in two or three days’ sightseeing—Niebuhr spent almost four months in this wretched town.

  But this is to anticipate events. In the meantime Carsten Niebuhr had vanished. He was known to have arrived in Basra at the beginning of August and collected from the Dutch Consul the money that von Gähler had sent from Constantinople. After that he suddenly disappeared and the man who left the town four months later was not called Carsten Niebuhr.

  We know how, ever since the Danish expedition started out from Copenhagen, it had been followed with great interest in all the European capitals. At home in Denmark, Bernstorff regularly received reports on its work, which he immediately forwarded to Michaelis, who for his part was in contact with all the most distinguished scholars of his day. Although these reports were often a long time in getting through, conta
ct was maintained with the travellers; virtually all educated Europeans knew what was going on. The tragedy in the Yemen was known far beyond university circles, and even as late as the summer of 1765 the world’s Press was following Carsten Niebuhr’s journey home. Hence the following notice on 3rd June of that year in the Gazette d’Utrecht reporting his arrival in Bushire: “A Danish scholar has arrived here who plans to travel on to Baghdad, Diarbekr and Aleppo. This scholar is the only survivor of the party of five men which four years ago was sent by his Majesty the King of Denmark to explore the Arabian coasts of the Red Sea.”

  Niebuhr’s contemporaries were thus kept well informed on how things were going. The eyes of the world were on him as far as contemporary means of communication allowed.

  But it is at this point that he was suddenly lost sight of. From the time of his departure from Basra, at the end of November 176 c, and up to 6th June, 1766, he did not see a single European. In Basra he also cast off the European clothes he had worn since Bombay and which he had often had reason to complain of, and changed back to his Arab clothes again. But this was not enough. This time he went a stage further in his attempt to live like an Arab; no doubt he had wanted to take this step earlier, but now he could do it because he was alone. He changed his name to Abdullah. This is Arabic and means “God’s servant,” and he chooses it because it is used by both Christians and Muslims. The transformation was carried out with extreme thoroughness; nobody, not even his own servant, knew that his real name was Carsten Niebuhr.

  For over six months he lived and talked and ate as if he were an Arab among Arabs. Right from his early years in the marshlands we were able to see how he preferred a life that can be lived in secret. In Shiraz, when he was annoyed about his European clothes, he had written that it did not worry him to be taken for a poor Oriental if only he could get on with his researches—a remark which in that age, when Europeans felt themselves enormously superior, must have seemed much more scandalous than it would to-day. For Niebuhr, as on a later occasion for T. E. Lawrence, the Arabian cloak acted like the cloak in the fairy-tale that makes its wearer invisible. In the Orient both of them felt and succumbed to the overwhelming fascination of anonymity which also is expressed in the Oriental proverb about the man who dares to lose his identity. A name is only a bandage over the eyes; the true observer was always a person who had lost his own identity.

  From now on, Niebuhr carefully avoided everything that might draw attention to his presence. Even his reports to von Gähler from this period were rare and brief; and because many of them went astray on the way, and the remainder only arrived years late, the people in Constantinople and Copenhagen began to get worried. For several months Bernstorff was convinced that Niebuhr had suffered the same fate as his travelling companions; and von Gähler, who was just about to auction off Forsskål’s, Baurenfeind’s and Kramer’s effects for the benefit of their dependents, was in no position to reassure him. A mysterious obscurity had settled over the Danish expedition; Niebuhr had vanished. But, thanks to his diaries, we can follow him day by day on his secret journey.

  From Basra it was Niebuhr’s intention to push on to Aleppo in Syria, and the shortest way there was straight across the desert. But because of the large bands of robbers who frequented those parts, it was so dangerous that it could could only be traversed by large, well-armed caravans such as the town, whose trade had suffered as a result of the civil wars, could no longer afford to equip. Instead Niebuhr had to travel via Baghdad. On 28th November he went aboard a river boat on which he had booked a small cabin. This he had to share with a sick Turk, who caused him a great deal of trouble, but otherwise the relations between himself and the passengers were excellent. When this strange Abdullah set up his strange astrolabe, they helped by forming a circle round him so that their long clothes gave protection from the north wind and the dust. As the Euphrates does not run exactly north and south, Niebuhr had the greatest difficulty in determining the distance travelled to enter it on his map. Then, too, they were sailing against the stream and were often delayed by the ebb and by head-winds. Most of the time the boat had to be pulled along from the banks, and not infrequently it went aground so that all the sailors had to throw off their clothes and wade out into the water to free it from the mud. Worst of all were those points where the peasants had dammed the river to provide water for their fields. There it could take days before the sailors had made a passage wide enough for them to proceed. At nights they moored alongside the banks, where they were regularly visited by robbers. One night Niebuhr had to fire a shot to frighten away a thief who had sneaked down into his cabin. On the days when the boat had to be towed they were also easy prey for hostile desert tribes. The captain got Niebuhr to station himself on the foredeck armed with a gun. He told the dumbfounded bandits that this Abdullah was a very important gentleman from Baghdad, and allowed him graciously to distribute dates to the sinners.

  A month after leaving Basra they reached the big town of Lemlum. Niebuhr had had enough of the moaning Turk and the delay, and he decided to travel with a poor Mohammedan priest and cover the rest of the journey to Baghdad overland. He hired a horse from a sheik who tried grossly to rob him, and rode north to Meshed Ali. From there he pushed on to Hilla by donkey, then made a detour to Karbala, and from there in a caravan of two hundred pilgrims back again to Hilla.

  One evening he halted his donkey beside some clay mounds on the plain which flanked the Euphrates. The air was still, and the river lay like congealed metal in the flat plain. To the west a ridge of hills still glowed against a deep sky. Niebuhr dismounted from his donkey, stood there for a while, and perhaps pictured this enormous city wall as it had been. It measured sixty miles in circumference, and the gateways were tremendous markets with shops and offices; here were the banks with their fully developed systems of credit, ready at once to finance war, shipping, mines or irrigation systems; here were the libraries with their observatories, their clear pools in inner courts, their cool galleries of laterite; here, a little farther down, were the splendid quays with their wares from all corners of the globe, an orgy of colour, a trading in pomegranates, date syrup, millet spirit and sesame wine, a noise of a seething mass of people, rich and poor, priests and prostitutes, soldiers who had ranged the deserts from India to the Mediterranean, astronomers familiar with the paths of the celestial bodies, engineers for whom it was no problem to make plane geometric construction drawings, and add the necessary estimates of area and cubic content. Where was all this now? An owl hooted dismally over the swamps by the river, and Niebuhr dared not explore the clay mounds any closer for fear of the snakes that hid in the two-foot-high grass. All the same, he remained standing there, allowing his thoughts to run back. Here stood ancient Babylon.

  Niebuhr’s map of the Caliph Ali’s holy town Meshed Ali and his drawing of the mosque with the cupolas

  5

  On Christmas Eve, 1765, Niebuhr rode as the first European into the holy city of Meshed Ali, where the golden cupolas above the Caliph’s grave glinted at him in the evening sun. Some time later he passed through Erbil, the ancient Arbela, where Alexander fought one of his hardest battles against the Persian king. At the beginning of the year 1766 he was riding alone with an Arab donkey-driver on the way to Baghdad.

  His diary suggests that it had been an amusing trip: “My donkey driver had command of so many lewd terms of abuse that never on the whole expedition had I heard the like. Unlike other Arabs, who never discussed their wives or daughters, this man expressed the wish every other second that his own womenfolk, mother and grandmother until the fifth and sixth generation, should be misused in the most scandalous fashion.” Then the entertainment ended. In the evening of 9th January, 1766, Niebuhr rode into Baghdad. He describes the houses without windows, the cramped spaces heated like ovens by the sun, and wind towers which conducted cool air down into the dark rooms. Thereafter followed the usual work: an account of the town’s recent history, including a list of the last forty-eight
pashas with their dates, and a map of the streets and fortifications.

  When he had been at this for a month he again felt the presence of death very near to him. Not in Baghdad either was he able to find a caravan going to Aleppo, although a large merchant caravan was going to Damascus. For several days he considered going with it, but at the last minute altered his decision and wrote some time later in his travel report: “So I remained in Baghdad, and I had good reason to be pleased about this decision, for shortly before arriving in Damascus the whole caravan was attacked and plundered; all its goods were lost, including a box of papers I had sent with it.”

  So one move followed another. Instead of moving on to Damascus, he continued north along the Tigris. This route was somewhat safer, he believed, and it also had the advantage of offering a number of larger towns instead of the few villages in the desert between Baghdad and Damascus. This time Niebuhr rode in company with thirty Jews, most of them poor and badly dressed, and all unarmed; they rode on donkeys whereas Niebuhr had hired a horse for himself and two mules for his servant and his baggage.

  On 3rd March this defenceless caravan left Baghdad. It was the rainy season, the tributaries of the Tigris were swollen, bridges were rare, and every crossing was a fresh problem. In the village of Altun Keupri, Niebuhr was faced with a critical situation: “During the last days and nights we had had so much rain that we were completely wet through and exhausted. All the same the caravan went straight through the town and camped in an open field on the other side of the river, which was called the Little Zab. Everybody advised me to go on with the caravan, as they felt sure that the river would rise so much during the night and begin to flow so fast that it would be risky crossing it the next morning. Usually, when making any arrangements for my journeys, I followed the advice of the local people; but as more rain was expected that night, on this occasion I thought only of the comfort of a proper house where I could spend the night sheltered from the rain and dry my soaking clothes. I therefore only sent the baggage mule over to the other side of the river, and I myself stayed behind with my servant.”