Travels Through Arabia, and Other Countries in the East (1)

by Carsten Niebuhr

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1792. Not illustrated. ... The inhabitants of those parts had been long looking impatiently for rain. In order that they might make the most of it, when it should fall, the peasants had raised dykes along the heights, to direct the course of the waters upon their sields. The sields lay favourably for receiving it, being formed into terraces, and these supported by walls, with ditches to preserve what water may be necessary to support vegetation. If this practice merit approbation, yet we cannot avoid condemning the unskilful expedient which those Highlanders employ for selling trees : they set sire to the root, and keep it burning till the tree fall of itself. Next day, we came to a small river which runs into the Zebid, and crofsed also several rivulets, which seem to be numerous in this part of-the country. Here, for the sirst time since our departure from Beit el Fakih, we saw plantations of coffee-trees, along the side* of the road. We now drew nearer to the river Zebid, of which a branch at this time was dry, and having its channel silled with reeds growing to the height of twenty seet, served as a line of road, which was agreeably shaded by the reeds. In the evening we arrived at Udden. The town of Udden is small and unprotected. Jt contains three hundred houses, all of stone. The Imam keeps no Dola here. An hereditary Schiech, Schiech, who is a vassal of the Imam's, is the governor. The Schiech resides in a palace, standing upon a high hill without the city. Except the immediate neighbourhood of Udden, the whole tract of country through which we travelled in this excursion is thinly peopled. But the territory of the town is so much the more populous, on account of the abundant produce of its coffee-trees, which is esteemed the very best coffee in all Arabia. Chap. Ill, From Udden t...

Genres: Travel

464 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Niebuhr was born the son of a small farmer in Lüdingworth (now a part of Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony) in what was then Bremen-Verden. He had little education, and for several years had to do the work of a peasant. He was interested in mathematics, however, and managed to obtain some training in surveying.

In 1760 one of his instructors suggested that Niebuhr join a scientific expedition being mounted by Frederick V of Denmark to Egypt, Arabia and Syria. Niebuhr studied mathematics for a year and a half before the expedition set out, and also managed to acquire some knowledge of Arabic. The expedition sailed in January 1761, and, landing at Alexandria, ascended the Nile. Proceeding to Suez, from where Niebuhr made a visit to Mount Sinai, in October 1762 the expedition sailed to Jeddah, and then journeyed overland to Mocha. Here, in May 1763, the expedition's philologist, von Haven, died, and shortly afterwards its naturalist Peter Forsskål also died. The remaining members of the expedition visited Sana, the capital of Yemen, but suffered from the climate and returned to Mocha. Niebuhr seems to have preserved his own life and restored his health by adopting native dress and eating native food. From Mocha the expedition continued to Bombay, the expedition's artist dying en route and the surgeon soon after landing. Niebuhr was now the only surviving member. He stayed in Bombay for fourteen months and then returned home by way of Muscat, Bushire, Shiraz and Persepolis. His copies of the cuneiform inscriptions at Persepolis proved to be a key turning point in the decipherment of cuneiform, and the birth of Assyriology. He also visited the ruins of Babylon (making many important sketches), Baghdad, Mosul and Aleppo. He seems also to have visited the Behistun Inscription in around 1764. After a visit to Cyprus he made a tour through Palestine, crossed the Taurus Mountains to Brussa, reached Constantinople in February 1767 and finally arrived in Copenhagen in the following November.

Niebuhr married in 1773, and for some years held a post in the Danish military service, which enabled him to remain in Copenhagen. In 1776 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1778 he accepted a position in the civil service of Danish Holstein, and went to reside at Meldorf (Ditmarsh), where he died in 1815. He was the father of the historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who published an account of his father's life in 1817.