Wilfred Thesiger

Jon Lee Anderson

In a study of the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, a noted British travel writer and explorer describes a way of life that lasted for thousands of years, until they were almost completely destroyed by Saddam Hussein, evoking the landscape and its teeming wildlife, profiling the many friends he made among the Marsh Arabs, and providing a record of the last remnants of a people and their culture. Original.

The Marsh Arabs

3. Impr

Arabian Sands

Wilfred Thesiger is the last of the great British eccentric explorers, renowned for his travels through some of the most inaccessible places on earth. As a child in Abyssinia he watched the glorious armies of Ras Tafari returning from hand-to-hand battle, their prisoners in chains; at the age of 23 he made his first expedition into the country of the Danakil, a murderous race among whom a man's status in the tribe depended on the number of men he had killed and castrated. His books, Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs, tell of his two sojourns in the Empty Quarter and the Marshes of Southern Iraq.

The Life of My Choice

Restless, gripped by an overwhelming wish to make a name for himself in a world ever more hemmed in by progress and 'civilization', Thesiger (1910-2003) embarked on his amazing journeys across Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter to test himself and to show what could still be done. The result was a monument both to his resilience and to the Bedu who guided him and who emerge as the book's real heroes. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things- Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

Across the Empty Quarter

A tour in pictures of the award-winning photographer's career contains selections from his journeys to sites on the farthest edges of civilizations, depicting such subjects as the Danakil, the Northern Darfur Muslim tribes, and Nuba wrestlers.

A Vanished World

An anthology of writings and photographs celebrating the outstanding contribution of one of the country's most distinguished and enduring travel writers, and the century's greatest living explorer.

An Anthology

My Life and Travels

This book is a collection of photographs chosen by Thesiger which include images from his Asian travels, the Arab world and images of Africa.

Visions of a Nomad

Wilfred Thesiger, this century's greatest living explorer, recalls his travels among the mountain ranges of Asia. Eventful, interesting and remarkable achievements in their own right, the Asian journeys - among the Hindu Kush, the Karakorams and the Pamirs - have inspired many of the finest photographs Thesiger has ever taken and contribute significantly to his standing as a great traveller and explorer. Spanning a period of over 30 years (1951-1983) this book draws on Thesiger's original diaries of his various journeys and his vivid memories of them, and includes some 80 or so previously unpublished photographs of the stunning mountain scenery he saw and the people he encountered.

Travels Through Asia

Among the Mountains

This is a collection of Wilfred Thesiger's greatest journeys - in the Empty Quarter of Arabia, the marshes of Iraq, the mountains of the Hindu Kush and Kurdistan, and the Yemen - illustrated with Thesiger's own photographs.

Desert, Marsh and Mountain

In 1930 Wilfred Thesiger attended the coronation of HIM Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa, at the Emperor's personal invitation. Afterwards he spent a month hunting alone in the hostile Danakil desert of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), a thrilling experience which led three years later to his successful exploration of the Awash River. Today he still regards this expedition as the most dangerous he ever undertook. Aged only 23, Thesiger became the first European to travel through the fabled Sultanate of Aussa, a forbidding land where two Italian expeditions and an Egyptian army had previously been wiped out by Danakil tribesmen. Thesiger's remarkable journey solved one of Africa's last remaining geographical mysteries, and established the reputation of a man now considered by many to be the century's greatest living explorer. A vivid, compelling narrative, 'The Danakil Diary' records how the young Thesiger surmounted overwhelming obstacles and survived the constant threat of death and mutilation by the Danakil, warriors whose tribal status depended on the number of men they had killed and castrated. He portrays the often beautiful, savage landscapes; their varied wildlife; and the strange, sometimes cruel customs of the Danakil, never before observed in such intimate detail. Interspersed with letters to his mother, Thesiger's diary is illustrated with original sketch-maps and drawings, and many of his previously unpublished photographs. Besides giving early proof of Thesiger's descriptive genius, 'The Danakil Diary' reveals youthful evidence of his fierce motivation and uncompromising will – familiar hallmarks of his sixty years of travel among primitive peoples in some of the harshest and remotest areas of the world. Wilfred Thesiger was born in 1910 at the British Legation in Addis Ababa, and spent his early years in Abyssinia. Educated at Eton and Oxford, where for four consecutive years he won his Blue for boxing, he joined the Sudan Political Service in 1935. During the next five years Thesiger visited little-known areas of the Sudan, Libya and the French Sahara. In the War, serving with the patriots under Orde Wingate in Abyssinia, he was awarded a DSO. He later served with the SOE (in Syria) and the SAS in the Western Desert. From 1930, always using traditional means of transport, Thesiger travelled through remote areas of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. For over twenty years, until 1994, he lived mostly among the pastoral Samburu at Maralal in northern Kenya. He now lives permanently in London. Thesiger's journeys have won him the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Lawrence of Arabia Medal of the Royal Central Asian Society, the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and the Burton Memorial Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society. His writing has won him the Heinemann Award; Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature; an Honorary D.Litt. from Leicester University and an Honorary D.Litt. from the University of Bath. In 1968 he was made a CBE. He is Honorary Fellow of the British Academy and Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He was honoured with a KBE in 1995. Wilfred Thesiger's previous books include 'Arabian Sands, The Marsh Arabs, Desert, Marsh and Mountain, Visions of a Nomad, The Life of My Choice' and 'My Kenya Days.'

Journeys Through Abyssinia, 1930-34

The Danakil Diary

My Kenya Days

“Five thousand years of history were here and the pattern was still unchanged.” During the years he spent among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, Wilfred Thesiger came to understand, admire and share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Travelling from village to village by canoe, he won acceptance by dispensing medicines and treating the sick. In this account of his time there, he pays tribute to the hospitality, loyalty, courage and endurance of the people, describes their impressive reed houses, the waterways and lakes teeming with wildlife, the herding of buffalo and hunting of wild boar, moments of tragedy and moments of pure comedy, all in vivid, engaging detail. Untouched by the modern world until recently, these independent people, their way of life and their surroundings suffered widespread destruction under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Wilfred Thesiger's magnificent account of his time spent among them is a moving testament to their now threatened culture and the landscape they inhabit.

Mit den Beduinen durch das unbekannte Arabien

Die Brunnen der Wüste

Als einer der ersten Europäer hat Wilfred Thesiger die Wüste Rub al-Khali durchquert: das "Leere Viertel" auf der arabischen Halbinsel, 780.000 Quadratkilometer Sand. Zwischen 1947 und 1950 durchstreifte er sie, ständig bedroht von Wassermangel und Stammesfehden. Er lebte mit den Beduinen und ahnte den Untergang ihrer traditionellen Kultur, der Nomadenkarawanen und Falkenjagd. Sein fesselnder Bericht berührt als Zeugnis dieser Welt - des alten Arabiens, wie es war, bevor Ölsucher, Lastwagen und westliche Importe es zermürbten. Das Dokument eines der letzten Entdecker zählt wie "Die sieben Säulen der Weisheit" zur großen Abenteuerliteratur.

Books from the Library of Wilfred Thesiger

A 'Most Cherished Possession'

Wilfred Thesiger's Photographs

A 'Most Cherished Possession' : an Exhibition at Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 16 June 1993-27 February 1994

Fondation Cartier

Many of these works - executed in the Sahara and in the deserts of Namibia, Libya, Australia and the American Southwest - have been specially commissioned for this volume."--Jacket.

The Desert

Collected here for the first time is a history of images of Oman, one of the most developed and stable countries in the Arab world and among the earliest adherents to Islam. A sultanate, the country sits along the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. From early days of world trade through the port of Muscat to contemporary engagement with international diplomacy and the West, Oman has always evoked beauty and mystery in equal measure. This art-house quality volume reveals an intimate picture of the country as its contours emerged over the last 80 years in the eyes of the West, as captured in images by English explorer Wilfred Thesiger in the 1940s and ‘50s, British Army major Charles Butt in the 1960s, and award-winning American documentary photographer Edward Grazda in the first decade of this new century.

Society and Religion 1945-2006

Three Views of Oman

Alexander Maitland

Sir Wilfred Thesiger was born in 1910 at the original British Legation - a collection of wattle-and-daub tukuls - in Addis Ababa, and spent his early years in Abyssinia. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and at the age of 20 attended the coronation of HIM Haile Selassie at the emperor's personal invitation. Three years later he made his first expedition into the country of the murderous Danakil tribe. He joined the Sudan political service in 1935 and served in the War in Abyssinia and the Middle East with Special Operations Executive and the Special Air Service under David Stirling.

Wilfred Thesiger

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