Arabia Felix

by Thorkild Hansen

  It was 12th March, 1766. A year had already passed since Niebuhr worked at Persepolis, and another Ramadan was over. In the evening he wandered round the town, watching the Bairam festival. Places of refreshment were set up everywhere, and in the market-place sword-swallowers, snake charmers and fencers performed. Niebuhr even took Arabian massage, which consisted of a merciless pommelling of every muscle in the body; he found it very effective in restoring the circulation after a long day’s travelling on horseback. During the night it started to rain again, but Niebuhr was sleeping soundly in a proper house in a proper bed. It was not until the next day that life again began in earnest:

  “On the morning of 13th March I could see immediately that the river had risen so high during the night that I could cross it only at peril of my life, and I wished I could stay where I was. But as I had sent my astrolabe and my other modest baggage over the river with the caravan, I had necessarily to follow. The rest of the caravan had already departed more than an hour before. I took the risk and followed them, with only my servant and groom who were both very frightened. Later in the day we caught up with the caravan; but this ride was a little too dangerous. On the way, there came first one and later two Kurd sheiks riding up to me, and they all looked ready to rob me. But as they were armed only with lances and I had firearms, and as I answered their questions about my journey without betraying how frightened I was, they did not dare to attack me after all.”

  On 15th March they halted at the banks of the Great Zab. The situation seemed hopeless. The river was so swollen that it was impossible to ride across it, and there were no boats at this point apart from some miserable kelleks belonging to the Yezidis, the so-called devil-worshippers who lived in the village on the far bank; of these, Niebuhr says he had never seen such inadequate craft in all his life. They consisted of thirty-two inflated skins tightly lashed to a raft; and their owners inspired no greater confidence. During the journey the people in the caravan had talked a great deal about the necessity of not swearing or even mentioning Satan’s name in the presence of the Yezidis, for there were many instances of how, in their anger, they had overturned their kelleks with the loss of life and property. At the sight of these craft, of the broad, fast-flowing river and of the boatmen who knew themselves hated for their religious beliefs but now felt masters of the situation, Niebuhr admitted that, like the Jews around him, he too was beginning to feel frightened. There were only very few kelleks available, and to get the whole caravan across they would have to go backwards and forwards several times. Everybody wanted to be first to cross in the hope that they would get over while the boats were still more or less intact, and nobody wanted to pay as much as the boatmen were asking. Violent quarrels broke out, and Niebuhr could truthfully say that throughout the journey from Baghdad he had not heard his travelling companions swear so vehemently as they did at this place where they had determined not to mention Satan’s name. He personally saw the expediency of not quarrelling with people whom he would have to entrust with his life. He paid the boatman what he asked and gave him a tip in addition to find a kellek which still had all its sheepskins reasonably inflated.

  So the crossing began. All the pack animals in the caravan had to swim over themselves, after their saddles and baggage had been unloaded. The horses and mules swam reasonably well; one of the boatmen took off his clothes, fastened an inflated sheepskin over his chest, and swam across leading three or four horses and mules behind him. The donkeys were more difficult; each had to have a pair of inflated sheepskins on its back, and not more than two animals could be taken over at a time. One donkey was swept away and drowned; the owner cursed and swore at the man who had charge of it, turned round to walk across to his other animals and found them lying with their throats cut.

  Meanwhile, Niebuhr’s kellek had been prepared. His baggage and saddle were carried down to the fragile craft, and now he was told to lie flat on top of the lot. Niebuhr and the naked, long-haired devil-worshipper began to push the raft off from the shore. The rest required a sense of humour, and as always when the situation became critical, Niebuhr took refuge in his good-tempered peasant irony: “The river rushed past, and I took it for granted that I would be flung into the waves together with my devil-worshipper; nevertheless, with God’s help, we got to the other side.”

  The large caravan was ferried over the river Zab unharmed, and there were no more major difficulties for the rest of the journey to Mosul. Now they were among fertile cornfields, and the villages were more frequent, although still very poor. To keep things straight, Niebuhr made a sketch of one of the poorest of them and marked it in on his map. It was the ruins of Nineveh.

  On 18th March, 1766, the caravan arrived in Mosul. For the first time since leaving Basra, Niebuhr called upon some Europeans, but the result was so unsatisfactory that he was not tempted to call again. He had approached some missionaries in the hope that they could find him a house. When he told them that he was Danish and a Protestant, and when they discovered that he had had the insolence to travel with a caravan consisting exclusively of Jews, they decided he was a heathen and slammed the door in his face. Instead of getting a proper house, he had to be thankful for a room in the public Arab hostel near the Tigris. There he sat in the evenings and watched the boats, which consisted exclusively of the familiar kelleks which were sent downstream from Mosul to Baghdad. There were no vessels going upstream, but in Baghdad the inflated sheepskins were removed from the timber rafts and sent back to Mosul by donkey while the rest of the vessel was sold off as old wood.

  The work in Mosul took no more than three weeks, and when Niebuhr heard that a large caravan was preparing to leave via Mardin for Aleppo in Syria, he decided to go with it even though it would only take him through the desert and not by the more interesting road through the mountains. Just as once before when preparing to set off with the great caravan from Cairo, he made a list of his equipment. This had not changed much in the intervening four years. Again there was his leather bag with cooking utensils, plates and drinking mugs of tinned copper, his little leather-covered wooden chest with spices, his travelling lantern and the ox-skin that served him as a table and which could be drawn up to form a sack. In addition, he had taken to carrying a little brandy with him in a goatskin bag; he used it for mixing with doubtful drinking-water. It did not taste particularly pleasant, but he had heard that it was good for the health. His stores of provisions had not changed much either since Egypt. There were still his rice, prunes, apricots and coffee beans, sun-dried meat, and the liquid butter which had once caused von Haven so much distress. He also carried with him a small sack of flour, so that he could always bake himself some fresh bread. Before leaving the bigger towns he always tried to get a supply of curds which he swung round in a leather bag, filling it up a little at a time as the whey ran out, until eventually he had as much cheese as he needed: “If one mixes it up again with water later on, it makes a very pleasant and cooling drink when one is thirsty, as well as an adequate meal if mixed with biscuits when one is hungry.”

  The rest of his equipment was equally simple. In front of him on his saddle hung his Persian pipe. His tent was quite small, and he used it only in emergencies so as not to attract too many inquisitive visitors. His bed consisted of a mattress, a thin sheet and a pillow; and he always slept like the Arabs, fully dressed. “This does not mean that the Arabs are any less clean than Europeans; they just wash themselves much more often,” he says. His other clothes, his books and his papers he had in two palliasse bags; his instruments were in their respective cases; and the whole did not amount to more than could safely be carried by a single extra horse.

  On 11th April, 1766, the caravan assembled outside Mosul. It was the biggest caravan Niebuhr had travelled with since leaving Cairo. It comprised more than 2,000 pack animals; 1,300 camels alone were loaded with gall-nuts from Kurdistan to be used in the preparation of medicine and ink, 120 camels carried silks from India and Persia and linen from Baghdad, and fo
rty-five camels were loaded with sacks of coffee. The remaining 500-600 pack animals were horses, mules and donkeys. Counting the men tending the camels and horses, the number of travellers amounted to not less than 400. In addition, there was a covering force of 150 soldiers which the businessmen had engaged so that the caravan would be strong enough to withstand any attack. Finally, there were several hundred more men which the various towns on the way sent with the caravan on the pretext of contributing to its defence, but in fact to exploit the rich merchants who had to fork out for these less reliable hirelings.

  The caravan was directed by the most important of the businessmen, the so-called caravanbashi, who rode right at the rear where the dust and the problems arose, settled disputes, paid out tolls and customs-duties, presented local sheiks with gifts, and apportioned the expenses among the travellers. Otherwise the many-headed monster progressed in any sort of order; the camel that was loaded first went first. They set off at dawn and rode all day over vast, dry plains, the sun burning the men’s necks, the camels tramping dejectedly directly upon their own shadows, and not until sunset did they pitch camp. News of the caravan’s passage usually ran on ahead to the little villages along its route, and every evening crowds of Kurds rode up and went round among the hundreds of tents selling goat-cheese and curds. Now and then they also had a young juicy chicken with them; it was usually alive and quite good; they had simply broken its wings so that it could not fly away.

  One evening when they were already several days’ journey from Mosul, there were indications that they were going to need the 150 soldiers accompanying them. Just as they had finished setting up camp, they saw an enormous cloud of dust rising into the air away over the flat, wide grassy plain. In less than half a minute the dramatic news had spread right through the camp; a galloping robber band was preparing to attack. The owners of the pack animals dropped whatever they happened to be holding and rushed out to their camels, horses and mules, which had already been driven out to graze, in order to bring them back into the camp as quickly as possible. Everywhere there was excitement and agitation, and this was further intensified when a horseman galloped in among the tents and reported that with his own eyes he had seen 2,000 Kurds advancing on the camp. Shortly afterwards another Arab jumped down off his horse, breathless; according to him there were not 2,000 Kurds, but 4,000. . . .

  Niebuhr stood on the edge of the camp watching the cloud of dust as it gradually approached. In the foreground he followed the scattered groups of Arabs and Turks advancing towards the enemy in the greatest disorder. He tried to accept the situation with composure; there was nothing for it but to abandon himself to his fate. Up to now his journey through the land of the Two Rivers had gone much better than expected. He still had to take care of his eyes, which since Persepolis became inflamed and painful at the slightest strain; but apart from this his health had improved daily. The numerous customs authorities that operated in practically every larger village, and which in the Yemen had been the cause of so much wasted time and so many losses and annoyances, had not bothered him since leaving Basra. Nobody paid any heed to this simply-dressed Abdullah who was travelling alone, with at the most one servant. When they saw that his baggage contained such unusual things as books, they decided he must be a poor Dervish. He had neither money nor merchandise, and so could pass unmolested. A few days earlier, there had admittedly been a controversy with a quarrelsome sheik who had taken away Niebuhr’s only camp bed. Niebuhr vainly showed him his letter of recommendation from the Sultan of Baghdad; the sheik just shook his head: “Here in the desert, I am your sultan,” he said, “and your papers cannot compel me to do anything.” Niebuhr was obliged instead to call on the local governor, who promptly invited him to dinner with sixteen other guests. A camel was slaughtered to mark the occasion, and together with great mounds of rice it was carried into the room where all the guests had arranged themselves in a circle on the floor. Niebuhr noticed how, at the sight of the enormous dishes, every man tucked up the wide sleeves of his robes right up to his shoulder, and no sooner were the dishes placed on the mud floor than sixteen bared arms were thrust into the mounds of rice. The guests snatched as much food as they could hold in their hands, licking up the melted butter which ran from their hands and down their arms, and ate the rice in leisurely fashion. For Niebuhr, the invitation was not in vain. By the time all the camel was eaten he had got his camp bed back.

  Now he stood outside the camp watching the preparations for battle. Half an hour had passed; the cloud of dust had grown so big it seemed to cover half the sky. In front of him he could see the small black silhouettes of the Arabs who had ridden out to meet the enemy, but who now seemed to be on their way back. Once more he was in luck. The returning horsemen came riding into the camp with loud cries. It was not 4,000 Kurds that had caused the enormous cloud of dust. It was a few shepherds and 4,000 sheep.

  On 25th April Niebuhr arrived in Mardin. There he let the caravan continue on to Aleppo, while he stayed for a few days in this high-lying town, with its dry mountain air, its clear drinking-water, its orchards with pears, plums, apples, hazel nuts and wild cherries, and its fertile meadows in the valleys where mountain cattle grazed. A few weeks later he pushed on with a small caravan up to Dairbekr, where he once more met the Tigris. He stayed there for eight days with the capable Oriental Capuchin monks, and on 19th May he had the chance of continuing with another caravan to Aleppo. En route he left his baggage with his servant, and left the caravan alone with a Kurd guide to make a detour up to the mountain town of Urfa with its twelve minarets, the city of the Seleucids and Parthians, the ancient Greek Edessa, which subsequently is said to have become the first Christian state. On the way he again had to save himself from a band of robbers by keeping them at a distance with his gun. It was clearly much too dangerous to travel alone in the trackless mountains, and when Niebuhr had fixed Edessa’s position and made a hasty map of the town, he hurried straight on to catch up with the caravan.

  It was late in the afternoon; the warm rays of the sun fell obliquely between the brown mountains; along the road grew olive trees and cork oaks. Then a new feature appeared in the uninhibited landscape. Niebuhr records: “In this area we found various wells where the cattle were watered by young girls from the surrounding villages. They did not wear veils like the women in the towns. They were well-developed, sun-tanned beauties. When we dismounted and greeted them, they brought us drinking-water in their clay pots and also watered our horses. Previously in other places I had experienced the same sort of kindness, but here it made a particularly deep impression on me, because Rebecca, who also belonged to this district, had shown kindness in the same way to weary travellers. Perhaps I had even drunk from the very same well where she drew water. We were now close to Haran, which is now only a small village a couple of days’ journey south-south-east from Urfa, but it is thought to be the town which Abraham departed from long ago to go to the land of Canaan while the rest of his family remained living there.”

  On the evening of the next day, 6th June, 1766, Niebuhr rode into Aleppo, where for the first time since Basra he met friendly Europeans who looked after him. Here Abdullah disappears from the story; Niebuhr’s six months’ journey incognito was over. It was almost as if he were emerging from a visit to the underworld. Everywhere the past has been present: in the people, the landscape, the ruins, and in the numerous stores of past greatness, buried treasure and hidden wealth he had everywhere heard. He retells one of these legends in his diary:

  “One afternoon, a peasant discovered a hole in a rock face in the mountain region of Mardin. He entered and saw two people sitting in front of a table, on which there lay fabulous treasures of gold and precious stones piled one above the other. When the men caught sight of the peasant, one of them handed him some lampblack and told him to smear the black stuff over his eyelids. The peasant did as he was told. In that moment he became blind and never recovered his sight.”

  This fairy-tale recalls the
story of another peasant lad who in another afternoon retrieved some cuneiform inscriptions from obscurity and the next morning woke up and could not see. Did Niebuhr himself perceive the parallel? We do not know; he only says: “I could not help retelling this legend for my readers.”

  6

  Now everything changed. Anonymity was abandoned, the years of isolation were past. After arriving in Aleppo, Niebuhr rode to the Dutch Consul General, Herr von Masseyk, who had already sent him a letter in Basra inviting him to stay at his home. In the consulate he was welcomed with open arms. His long disappearance had been a constant topic of conversation in European circles in the Near East, and his sudden appearance on the evening of 6th June was by way of being a sensation. The sad fate of his colleagues had been discussed at all the big receptions in town, and his own fate too had long since been decided. Now he had succeeded in making the long journey from Bombay via Basra and Baghdad alone. Twenty-four hours after his arrival in Aleppo, Carsten Niebuhr was the hero of the hour; there was great rivalry to be of some service to him, and the Dutch Consul General noted how he had gained in prestige from the flood-tide of invitations. To have even the dimmest Dutch nonentities in their circle became suddenly worth its weight in gold to the fashionable ladies in the European quarter.