Book description
Escape from Riyadh -
William Gifford Palgrave A scholar and a solider, a Jesuit and
a Jew, a French spy and a British ambassador- Palgrave was a man of
contradictions, all of them highly compromised when in 1862-3,
fortified by Pius IX's blessing and Napoleon III's cash, he attempted
the first west- east crossing of the Arabian peninsular. To steely
nerves and a genius for disguise he owed his eventual success; but not
before both were sorely tested when, as a Syrian doctor, he became the
first European to enter Riyadh. The desert capital of the fanatical
Wahabis, dangerous for an infidel at the best of times, was then
doubly so as the sons of the ageing King Feisal intrigued for power.
Desert Days -
Charles Montagu Doughty During two years (1875-7) wandering in
Central Arabia Doughty broke little new ground; dependant on desert
charity, his achievement was simply to have survived. Yet his book,
Arabia Deserta, was instantly recognized as a classic. Its eccentric
prose proves well suited to that minute observation and experience of
Bedouin life which was Doughty's main contribution to exploration. T.
E. Lawrence called it "a bible of a kind"; both syntax and
subject matter have biblical resonances, as in this description of a
day's march, or rahla.
