Table Of ContentHeart-beguiling Araby
KATHRYN TIDRICK
I.B.TAURIS & Co Ltd
Publishers
London
I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
110 Gloucester Avenue
London NW18JA
First published by Cambridge University Press 1981
Revised edition published by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 1989
Copyright© 1981, 1989 by Kathryn Tidrick
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
any part thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the Publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Tidrick, Kathryn
Heart-beguiling Araby: the English romance with Arabia. -
2nd ed.
1. Arabian civilization. Attitudes of English
persons. ea 1800-1975
I. Title
953'.04
ISBN 1-8504~135-3
ISBN 1-8504~136-1 Pbk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
For my parents
}AMES and ELLEN }ACKSON
'Dark-browed Sailor, tell me now,
Where, where is Araby?
The tide's aflow, the wind ablow,
Tis I who pine for Araby .'
'Master, she her spices showers
0' er nine and ninety leagues of sea;
The laden air breathes faint and rare -
Dreams on far-distant Araby.'
'Oh, but Sailor, tell me true;
'Twas Man who mapped this Araby;
Though dangers brew, let me and you
Embark this night for Araby .. .'
Wails the wind from star to star;
Rock the loud waves their dirge: and, see!
Through foam and wrack, a boat drifts back:
Ah, heart-beguiling Araby!
Waiter de la Mare
The attraction, the spell of Arabia, as it is so frequently called, is
a sickness of the imagination. It was not until I had left Arabia
and her doors were closed to me that, while tasting the bitter
sweets of memory, I began to muse unhappily on how such a
barren mistress, as that country is, can enslave the heart and
mind with so deep an intermingling of yearning and abomina
tion. He is comfortless indeed who has opened the windows of
his spirit to her parching breath. And it is true that those who
have fully known her wish never to return.
The Master of Belhaven, The Kingdom of Melchior, 1949
Contents
Illustrations pageix
Acknowledgments xi
Foreword xiii
Prologue 1
PART ONE
1 A Sometimes Noble Savage 5
2 'Oh! that the Desert were my
dwelling-place ... ' 32
PART TWO
3 Richard Burton (1821-1890) 57
4 Gifford Palgrave (1826-1888) 84
5 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922) 107
6 Charles M. Doughty (1843-1926) 136
7 The Victorian Contribution 157
PART THREE
8 The Great War and the Arabists 163
9 Hail and Farewell 193
Epilogue: To Know Them was to Love
Them 207
Notes 220
Bibliography 231
Index 239
vii
Illustrations
1 The 'Grand Emir' of Mt Carmel, as seen by Laurent
d'Arvieux 10
pa~e
(D' Arvieux, Voyage en Palestine, 1718. Photo: Bibliotheque
Nationale)
2 Carsten Niebuhr in his Arabian dress 14
(Carsten Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie, 1776--80)
3 Jean Louis Burckhardt 25
(Jean Louis Burckhardt, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, 1822)
4 'Punch in the East': Thackeray descending the Great
Pyramid 51
(Punch, 22 February 1845)
5 Richard Burton 58
(National Portrait Gallery, London)
6 A phrenological exercise from Burton' s Personal
Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah 77
(R. F. Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah &
Meccah, 1855-6)
7 William Gifford Palgrave 85
(W. G. Palgrave, Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and
Eastern Arabia (1862-63), 1865)
8 Wilfrid Blunt as a young man 108
(Lady Wentworth, The Authentic Arabian Horse, 1945)
9 Faris, sheikh of the Shammar, drawn by Lady Anne
Blunt 119
(Lady Wentworth, The Authentic Arabian Horse, 1945)
10 'A fire yet flickering over the ashes of an old fury' -
Blunt in old age 133
(Lady Wentworth, The Authentic Arabian Horse, 1945)
ix
Illustrations
11 Charles M. Doughty 137
(The Bookman, June 1927)
12 A photograph of Lawrence from Lowell Thomas's
book, with the original caption 171
(Lowell Thomas, With Lawrence in Arabia, 1924)
13 Gertrude Bell in her natural element 188
(Lady Bell, The Letters of Gertrude Bell, 1927)
MAPS
1 The Arabian Peninsula xii
2 The Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916 167
X
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Stephen Krasner, Elizabeth
Monroe and Gene Tidrick for reading and com
menting on the manuscript. I would also like to
acknowledge the use I made of the following libraries
and the help given to me by their staffs: Stetson
Library, Williams College; Central Library, Man
chester; John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Brit
ish Museum Library; the library of the University of
Oar es Salaam; the Library of Congress; Widener
Library, Harvard University. Rhoda Blade-Charest
typed the manuscript.
Much of this book was written while I was living in
Africa, and I was again in Africa while. it was going
through the press. I must therefore thank Linda
Alwitt for checking a crucial point in Chapter 4, and
Andrew Brown of Cambridge University Press for
taking on many tasks which I was unable to perform
myself.
xi
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Map I The Arabian Peninsula
xii
