Exploring Arabia's Empty Quarter

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 1940s, British gentleman explorer Wilfred Thesiger travelled extensively in one of the world's harshest environments - the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Thesiger lived with nomads in order to cross a desert that was then considered a place of mystery and death. He captured a final glimpse of their way-of-life before the arrival of the oil industry, and was inspired to write the classic travel book Arabian Sands. Simon Watts introduces recordings of Wilfred Thesiger in the BBC archive.

PHOTO: Wilfred Thesiger (Pitt Rivers Museum via Bridgeman Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:37.0	Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of the BBC World Service
0:45.1	history program Witness History with me Simon Watts. Today I'm bringing you the
0:50.8	remarkable story of the British Explorer Wilfred Theseger.
0:55.2	Theseger lived like a Bedouin nomad for several years in order to explore the uncharted
1:00.8	dunes, quicksands and oasis of the Arabian Desert. His classic
1:05.8	1959 travel book Arabian Sands captured a way of life that was about to be
1:11.6	transformed by the oil industry.
1:15.0	After the Second World War,
1:19.0	Wilfred Thessiger made two epic journeys through the Rubel-Hali or empty quarter of the Arabian Peninsula.
1:27.0	There's a solitude and the freedom of these vast spaces and to some of us the irresistible attraction of no mad life and
1:35.9	were one's pleasures though very simple and very real a long drink of teen water
1:41.3	of the ethereal beauty of the dawn and sunset, which is almost the
1:46.5	beauty of another world.
1:48.6	The orange-y red dunes of the
1:55.0	ones are the largest continuous sand desert in the world. With temperatures peeking at 50 degrees,
1:58.0	the climate is so harsh that it's home only to Bedouin.
	...

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