The Empty Quarter: being a description of the great south desert of Arabia known as Rub 'al Khali

by Harry St. John Philby

Travelogue of a British intelligence officer in the Arabian desert during the early 1930s. With Illustrations

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel

435 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 1986

About the author

Harry St John Bridger Philby Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) (3 April 1885, Badulla, British Ceylon – 30 September 1960, Beirut, Lebanon), also known as Jack Philby or Sheikh Abdullah (الشيخ عبدالله), was a British Arabist, adviser, explorer, writer, and colonial office intelligence officer.
As he states in his autobiography, he "became something of a fanatic" and in 1908[1] "the first Socialist to join the Indian Civil Service". After studying oriental languages at the University of Cambridge, he was posted to Lahore in the Punjab in 1908, acquiring fluency in Urdu, Punjabi, Baluchi, Persian, and eventually Arabic. He converted to Islam in 1930, and later became an adviser to Ibn Saud, urging him to become King of the whole of Arabia,[2] and helping him to negotiate with the United Kingdom and the United States when petroleum was discovered in 1938; in addition he married for the second time, to a Saudi Arabian.[3]
His only son, Kim Philby, became infamous as a double agent for the Soviet Union in 1963.[4]

Reviews

[Mana · Rating 5 out of 5]

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