Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles Montagu Doughty
"Travels in Arabia Deserta," authored by Charles Montagu Doughty and published in 1888, is celebrated as one of the most significant travel narratives in English literature. Doughty spent nearly two years journeying through northwestern Arabia, an area largely unknown to Westerners at the time, where he immersed himself in the lives and cultures of various nomadic tribes. His work offers a detailed and objective portrayal of these communities, focusing on their customs, social structures, and the harsh realities of desert life, including issues of poverty, food scarcity, and intertribal conflicts.
As a geologist and keen observer, Doughty contributed valuable insights into the region's climate and geography, even producing some of the first geological maps of the area. He approached his subjects with respect and understanding, avoiding romanticized views, while also documenting the nuances of gender roles and justice within tribal societies. Doughty’s writing style, marked by its archaic richness, effectively conveys the stark contrast between the nomadic lifestyle and Western civilization. His narrative serves not only as a travel account but also as a comprehensive exploration of the beliefs, practices, and existential challenges faced by the nomads of Arabia.
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Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles Montagu Doughty
First published: 1888
Type of work: Record of travel
Time of work: 1876-1878
Locale: Northwestern Arabia
Critical Evaluation:
TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA has been recognized, almost since its publication in 1888, as one of the greatest travel books in the English language. Doughty spent almost two years traveling, going on pilgrimages, and living with various nomad tribes in northwestern Arabia, then a land almost completely unknown to Europeans and Americans. His account is a thoroughly realized document, a comprehensive understanding and treatment of every aspect of the life of the nomadic Arabs. Written with grace, fullness, and enormous insight, TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA has become a classic of travel literature and a necessary book of instructions for anyone interested in that part of the Moslem world. T. E. Lawrence, in his introduction to the 1921 edition of this work, acknowledged that Doughty was the first and greatest of all European writers on Arabia.
TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA is also an objective treatment of life among the nomads. Doughty was content to observe, to understand, to record, without leveling judgments against a civilization so different from his own. This objectivity allowed him to see and report the Arabs as they lived, to understand fully their customs, their prejudices, and their attitudes.
In several ways, Doughty was extremely well equipped to be one of the first Europeans to visit the Arabian peninsula and explore it extensively. A geologist, he was able to draw geological maps of uncharted territory and determine the nature of the terrain. As a scientist he was also enormously interested in the climate of Arabia, and he filled his book with observations on climate and topography. Doughty drew, and included in his work, some of the first maps of the area he visited. He was also interested in and knowledgeable about architecture and archaeology. He captured a keen sense of Arabic design and often used one of the designs as a chapter heading. Because of his interest in many phases of scientific learning, he was able to use many of the skills of Western civilization, for the first time, on the Arabian peninsula. In addition, Doughty was an able medical practitioner. He attempted to use his medical knowledge to help the Arabs among whom he lived. Although, later, he did help enormously during epidemics of tropical diseases such as cholera and leprosy, the Arabs were often inclined to distrust him. Doughty points out that in their love for certainty and complete assurance they were likely to judge a medical practice by a single case and they were not appreciative of the tentative conclusions of honest medical science.
Although Doughty had great respect and affection for the nomad tribes among whom he traveled, he did not sentimentalize them or the conditions in which they lived. Long passages in TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA describe their filth, poverty, and ignorance. Frequently they could get little food; often, even the chief of the tribe could not get enough water for his wife to make him a cup of coffee. They wore thin cotton robes, even though the desert nights frequently became very cold. The Arabs met with frequent rival tribes who might steal their camels and their meager possessions, and they were suspicious of any stranger. Their life, as depicted by Doughty, was not the life of romantic adventure; rather it was one of poverty, hardness, insecurity, and want.
TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA gives a complete picture of the social life and customs of the nomad tribes. Men, ruling the family tyrannically, decided also the affairs of the tribe. Women were servants, and girl children were not looked on with favor. In the tribes Doughty visited he found little evidence of the notion of the harem that Europeans and Americans have idealized. There was no moral feeling against polygamy, but most of the men, even the chiefs, could not afford to keep more than one woman. The woman, if she found the arrangement not to her liking, could run away and settle herself in a place more congenial to her. And those men who had two wives with them on their travels frequently found the jealousy between the two women not worth the extra pleasure of a second wife. Women were slaves in the family itself, but they had some choice as to whether or not to submit to slavery. Doughty also discussed the notion of justice in the Arab society. Although the men ruled the family firmly and there were frequent wars between different tribes, justice within the tribe was fairly humane and understanding. Thieves were not hanged but, rather, were forced to make amends. Doughty contrasted these notions of a merciful concept of justice with the ideas of divine wrath and fearful justice in the Old Testament.
Doughty did not simply chronicle the social customs of the Arabs. He also discussed their religion fully and attempted to relate both their religion and their customs to the kind of life the climate and the economic circumstances forced them to lead. In their difficult desert existence, the leniency of their justice was an expression of their sympathy for others caught in the same way of life, but, according to Doughty, they would never have articulated such a feeling, for their life made such practical demands upon them that they had neither the time nor the inclination for any introspection or analysis. They simply went about the difficult task of keeping themselves alive.
They were a deeply religious people. Although the open and barren nature of their terrain made them suspicious of enemies, forthright and direct in manner and speech, and little inclined to subtle thought, this same open terrain, this area that showed only earth and sky, seemed to make them feel closer to God and feel their religion with enormous intensity. They often embraced religious causes, and they followed the dictates of their religion with a fierce intensity that was not necessarily moral or reasoned, but rather a product of the closeness they felt with God. They accepted death and disaster easily (too easily, at times, for Doughty), for these people, trying to live in the enormous, barren desert, felt themselves subject to the will of an all-powerful God. When they could build structures, they built towers, expressions of their desire both to relieve the flatness of their surroundings and to approach God more closely. The towers were also useful in posting watchmen to warn the tribe of any possible enemy attack. Doughty points out also that the tower is the natural expression of the tribe used to desert existence, the natural attempt to put the relationship between God and man in a vertical sphere.
Doughty discusses, too, the fanatical quality of the nomad’s religion, his willingness to sacrifice anything, including his life, for a cause he believes sacred. This fanaticism is, again, a product of the singleness, the open nature of his desert surroundings. Man finds little in nature to divert him, little to draw his attention from his home and his God, so in his allegiance to his cause he finds little qualification or sophistication to divert his faith.
Doughty conveyed his observations in a rich, full style. He managed to use this fullness as a splendid means of carrying the entire range of his observations and inferences about Arab life. At times, to contemporary ears, his style seems stilted and archaic. For example, he writes sentences like this: “We were to depart be-times by the morrow.” This style was deliberately archaic even in the 1880’s, yet it helps to produce the flavor of a different and more primitive culture. The archaic richness of the style completes the contrast between our world and the world of the Arab nomad. Doughty, fully aware of the differences between these worlds, has managed to create a comprehensive and understanding portrait of the nomad world, to produce, in TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA, a history of the beliefs, the experiences, the essential conditions of life, of the nomadic peoples of northwestern Arabia.