JEDDAH, 27 August 2003 — Sir Wilfred Thesiger, the explorer and writer who first brought the life of the desert Bedouin of the Arabian Peninsula to public notice half a century ago, died peacefully on Sunday in a nursing home in Coulsdon, south of London.
Dr. John Hemming, former director of the British Royal Geographical Society who knew Thesiger well, described him as “the last of the great desert explorers.” Thesiger explored remote areas of Arabia and Asia and adopted the lifestyles of the people he traveled among.
Alex Maitland, Thesiger’s godson and official biographer, told Arab News: “Sir Wilfred died peacefully Sunday afternoon after a short illness.
“There has been a wave of goodwill toward him,” he said. “Since the announcement, we have received hundreds of supportive phone calls, invariably mourning the loss of this great man, and all respectful.”
Robin Hanbury-Tenison, a well-known explorer and leader of the definitive Borneo Rainforests expedition in 1977-78, knew Thesiger for over 40 years. At the age of 68, Thesiger visited Hanbury-Tenison on that expedition, climbed the mountains and at the top was asked what he thought of the forest. “I prefer,” Thesiger said, “an environment where water is better appreciated.”
“He was a gentle conversationalist who drew you out, but absolutely firm and rigid in his views,” Hanbury-Tenison said. “He was regarded in his lifetime as an old reactionary — against progress, education and cars — but he is increasingly now being seen as way ahead of his time — a true environmentalist and human rights person. He would not have thought of himself as that.”
Asked if Thesiger was the last great explorer, he said: “Yes of course he was, the last pure one. He said himself that he came from a generation where it was possible to do things in the proper way.” He referred to the last paragraph in Thesiger’s book “Arabian Sands”. In it he says that he was very lucky that he was able to cross the Rub Al-Khali by camel when it was not possible by motor car. “If I had been able to do it by car, and still used a camel, then it would have only been a stunt.”
Hanbury-Tenison saw that as the essence of Thesiger’s achievements. “He was able to travel to fulfill his antipathy to Western values. Today we concentrate more on the science and research and understanding the planet,” he said.
“I didn’t miss Western civilization,” Thesiger once wrote. “I wanted to get as far away from all that as I could. I was just in time to travel, see and experience a vanishing world and to live the life of my choice.”
Thesiger came from a privileged background. He was born in a mud hut on the compound of the British Legation in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, where his father was British minister, recently arrived by mule. He was influenced greatly by the country and his vision as a boy of six watching the Emperor Haile Selassie entering the city after his great victory over the revolutionaries and later when he returned as an Oxford undergraduate for his coronation. “The sight implanted in me a lifelong craving for barbaric splendor, for savagery and color and the throb of drums.”
He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and returned to Abyssinia for a trek among the Danakil tribes, tracing the final outflow of a river. Here he met tribesmen whose social standing was measured by the number of men they had killed. “I knew that this moonlight meeting in unknown Africa with a savage potentate who hated Europeans was the realization of my boyhood dreams,” he wrote in his autobiography “The Life of My Choice”.
During World War II, Thesiger was involved in the earliest operations of the SAS, where his skills in the desert and in Arabic were used to the full. During this period he won the Distinguished Service Order.
He traveled widely in the Empty Quarter of Arabia between 1946 and the early 1950s with the Bedouin of the Rashid tribe, to whom he was simply known as “Mubarak” (blessed one). He was profoundly affected by their generosity and code of behavior. Later, he lived for eight years with the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, describing their culture and life in the vast wetlands, now 90 percent drained by Saddam Hussein’s regime after they rebelled against him in 1991.
His two books “The Sands of Arabia” and “The Marsh Arabs” are widely regarded as classics, defining cultures that are all but gone. The affinity he developed with the nomadic warriors of Asia and Africa lasted the whole of his life. His insistence that he lived as they did and endured the same privations allowed him insights into their cultures and a respect that was unique.
For many years he lived in a simple shack with no modern amenities among the Samburu people of Kenya, where he was regarded as a respected member of the community and known affectionately as “the old man up there.” Before leaving Kenya for England, he said: “I have told Lawi (one of the family he had adopted) to dig a hole in his garden and pop me into it without any nonsense.”
He only returned to Britain in his mid-80s, but always yearned to be in a place that had yet to be invaded by cars and airplanes and where uncomplicated though sometimes harsh moral codes held sway.
He received many honors for his explorations, including the Founders medal of the Royal Geographic Society in 1948 after crossing the Empty Quarter, the Lawrence of Arabia Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1955, and the Burton Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1966. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1968 and knighted in 1995.
Once asked what, based on his experience, he regarded most valuable in life he replied: “All that really matters is relationships with people. In the desert, you learn that. If you don’t have good relationships, then you die.”
