Carsten Niebuhr did not know this, but he never again used the description “Arabia Felix.” He calls the country the Yemen. After his experiences, this land could never more be the land of happiness on earth. None the less he writes in his diary: “I hope that our sad example will neither discourage the monarchs of Europe from supporting similar expeditions in the future nor dissuade scholars from undertaking them. If only we had been more on our guard against colds, and also right from the start tried in general to live more in conformity with Oriental custom, and if only the various members of the expedition had only had a little more confidence in one another and had not so filled the journey with frustrations by their suspicion and their quarrelling, then perhaps we might all have arrived back happily in Europe.”
When Niebuhr uses the word “happily,” it has a different sound. He did not believe in phrases. He did not believe in “Arabia Felix”—“Happy Arabia.” Perhaps he never had. But for Peter Forsskål and von Haven no doubts existed. These two both believed in “Arabia Felix,” even if it was not exactly the same country. For the former it was to be a chance of making new scholarly triumphs, of fame and honour, and a life pension from the King of Denmark. For the latter it meant money. A great deal of money. Between these two men stood the son of a marshland peasant. He was neither professor nor doctor, nor did he wish to be the expedition’s leader. He was nothing. But when the sad remnants of the expedition were carried out of Arabia Felix, this man was the only one still on his feet.
[1] Carsten Niebuhr’s severe judgment has been largely ratified by posterity, i.e. by Forsskål’s two biographers, Carl Christensen and Henrik Schück, the only ones in the past to be concerned with the Danish expedition.
7. Carsten Niebuhr’s return
In the Indian Ocean it is summer all the year round. Now and then the tropical rain lashes vertically down upon the indolent sea, giving the impression that some divinity or other has formed the crazy idea of washing the ocean; but it rarely lasts more than a few hours and then the clouds disperse and the sky reverts to that invariable Turkish blue; a shoal of flying fish about the size of herring glint along the sides of the ship like a handful of coins thrown into the sea. Twelve hours of sun is followed by twelve hours of darkness. Every evening at exactly the same time the day dies astern in a pool of sacrificial blood. There is no twilight; in a moment it is pitch black. Not once does the moon send a strip of light across the water; this can never be, because it is at the zenith; one must stand with one’s head thrown right back to see that drunken, bloated face hanging up there in full view, while Sirius and Orion revolve coldly around it, appraising it from all sides. The next morning it is summer again. The planks of the decks burn under the bare feet of the sailors, the pitch sweats at the joints. The only thing that brings a little variety to the scenery is the monsoon, though this too has rather monotonous habits. One half of the year it blows from the south-west and the other half from the north-east; while everything else stands still, it rushes in solitude backwards and forwards between Africa and Asia. Although in the Indian Ocean it is summer the whole year round, the monsoon passes over it without noticing; it is always on the move, and happiness is always where it is not.
When Captain John Martin weighed anchor off Mocha in the month of August 1763, it was still the season when the monsoon blows from the south-west. He could thus sail east to India with a light and trustworthy breeze abaft the beam; but there was not much force left in the monsoon at this point, for most of it had long since arrived in Asia, where it was just beginning to long to return. John Martin had several becalmed days on the voyage, and it was three weeks before he reached Bombay, on 11th September, 1763, with the 250,000 Speciedaler, the twelve cases of odds and ends, and the two mortally wretched passengers by the name of Carsten Niebuhr and Carl Christian Kramer.
With the English in Bombay, the two sick men found themselves in those well-ordered conditions that the victors of the recently ended colonial war with France were able to export to the farthest corners of the earth, together with their whist and their whisky. For the first time since Constantinople, Niebuhr and Kramer could once more put on European clothes. They were given a comfortable house to live in, and were looked after by an able English doctor. Carsten Niebuhr managed to get in touch with a Danish merchant in Calcutta and had Forsskål’s valuable chests transported via this town to Trankebar, thus settling this worrying problem. The climate in Bombay was fresh and cool compared with the terrible heat in Mocha, and down in the harbour several large ships lay ready to weigh anchor and take them to London as soon as the monsoon turned. Everything seemed to be working out at last.
But things did not go according to plan; help had come too late. Towards the end of the year 1763, when the monsoon was still blowing towards Africa, Kramer’s condition was so wretched that there could be no question of leaving. Early in the new year, on 10th February, 1764, the last of Carsten Niebuhr’s colleagues died. We know no details of his death. Niebuhr only wrote in his diary that on this day Kramer also had to “leave this temporal world,” and he did not on this occasion include any word in memory of the deceased, as he had done when the others died. This need not necessarily be ascribed to reluctance. There was simply nothing to say. We know that towards the end the relations between the two men were not wholly harmonious; Niebuhr mentions in a letter to von Gähler how Kramer insisted upon Niebuhr addressing him as “Herr Doctor,” and how at one point they had planned to travel home separately. There is a limit, however, to the importance that can be attached to these details in judging Kramer. They indicate no more than that the situation was strained; one ship after another had sailed for London without their being able to leave with them; their position had been nerve-racking right to the end, and even Niebuhr must have had his less amiable days. Much more revealing is another of the sentences in the letter to von Gähler. Niebuhr writes here that “it could do no harm to ask to see the Herr Doctor’s notes; it is possible that he has discovered something important.”
This apparently innocent remark is in fact riddled with sarcasm. For, as Niebuhr knew perfectly well, Kramer did not leave behind him a single word. That enigmatic person made the whole of that journey from Copenhagen to Bombay without so much as writing a letter or making a note. In all the pile of documents on the Arabian journey in the State Archives there is not a word in Kramer’s hand. If we did not have his signature as a witness on some of the letters sent by the others, we might well doubt that he had ever been on the expedition. His only message to posterity is a few words of advice on the proper care of canaries. This fact is in itself remarkable. The most significant thing one can say about this silent Dane, who died at the age of thirty-two in Bombay, is that there is nothing to say. He was either a rare exponent of the art of living, or a fool.
Of the six men who had left Copenhagen four years earlier, only Carsten Niebuhr now remained alive. He writes in his diary: “Of our numerically strong party there is none but myself left. When I think about the prescribed return journey via Basra and through Turkey, I anticipate at least as many hardships as those we had to suffer from Egypt to Bombay. I thus have only the smallest hope of ever seeing Europe again. Be that as it may, I now regard it as most important to try above all else to regain my health, for if I too finally die it is most uncertain whether my papers will ever get to Europe.” The idea here is that Niebuhr, rather than risk his life on the hazardous overland journey, would endeavour to regain strength enough to realise his old plan of going by ship to London. When Kramer died, however, this possibility had to be temporarily abandoned. The monsoon had completed its trip to Africa and was blowing towards Asia again. It would not be possible to take ship for London for another six months. Niebuhr had to stay in Bombay. By March he felt sufficiently recovered to take a trip north to visit and describe the big seaport of Surat. He set out on 24th March on an English ship which was going there to pick up a cargo for shipment to China. In Surat, Niebuhr made a study of the town
’s trade, and he described the great festivities with their processions of elephants and palanquins through the streets. After fourteen days he returned with the English ship to Bombay. Once more he changed his plans. He would go to China. He booked a cabin aboard so that he could continue with the ship when it left Bombay for China in a few weeks’ time.
After Baurenfeind’s death Niebuhr took over the sketching of the expedition. This is his drawing of the Indian chairbearers and the palanquin that was used in the procession in Bombay and Surat
But Niebuhr had again reckoned without fate. His illness now returned and upset all his calculations. He had started work too soon. On the way back from Surat he felt as if he had “caught cold” again, and when they reached Bombay he had an attack of fever worse even than those that had assailed him in the Yemen. On 20th April the English ship sailed for China, while Niebuhr lay shivering in bed with no possibility of going with it.
This time too he managed to withstand the attack, but now he decided he could not disregard the warning any longer. When he was fit again, he altered his way of life completely. For six months he ate nothing but rice, water and a few fruits and tried to adopt strictly regular habits. That did not mean, however, that he let up on his work. In the months that followed he laid the foundation of his great account of Bombay; he described the town’s geographical situation, its history and form of government, its climate and trade, its religion and caste system. He studied the Indian alphabet and the Indian calendar, and he made two trips to Elephant Island, where he wrote detailed descriptions of the temples and supplemented them with eight plates, for in the absence of Baurenfeind he had to try to reproduce reliefs and columns himself. He was particularly fascinated by the Hindus, whose frugal and unobtrusive way of life was so near his own ideal, not least now that illness had compelled him to simplify his diet according to principles almost identical with theirs. He ends his description of the Hindus with this heretical reflection: “We Europeans tend to call them heathens and idolaters, and these names imply that we do not have a very high opinion of them. But anyone who has had the opportunity to get to know them better will find them a gentle, honest and industrious people, and perhaps of all the nations the people who least seek to harm one another.”
In Bombay he first made the acquaintance of the highly respected Parsees, the remnants of the Persian population which would not submit to Islam but continued to profess Mazdaism and were therefore driven out when in a.d. 652 the Arabs overthrew the Sassanid dynasty. Niebuhr describes their peculiar burial custom of putting their dead in high towers, where their bodies are devoured by vultures, a practice which can be seen even to-day in remoter Persian towns. Not far from Bombay there was such a tower, but when Niebuhr went there to have a closer look, he discovered that the tower had been locked. Niebuhr gives a note of explanation in his diary: “A young and beautiful girl died suddenly and was buried up there, and it is said that she was receiving one more visit from her lover in this cemetery.”
Work on his great report on Bombay took Niebuhr up to the autumn of 1764. He could see now how his health was beginning to improve. In addition to his routine collecting of information, he also had time and strength to teach himself English. He was impressed by the liberal government of Bombay by the English; personally, he owed his life to their hospitality, and all this resulted in his developing a mild Anglomania, which he never lost. As his health improved, so his urge to travel grew; finally he abandoned his earlier plan to travel home direct via London. Niebuhr did not book a cabin on the English ship now preparing to sail from Bombay. He meant to carry out the original plan contained in Bernstorff’s instructions. Niebuhr meant to travel home overland.
The last weeks were taken up with preparations. First he decided to send all von Haven’s and Forsskål’s manuscripts, together with Baurenfeind’s drawings and the greater part of his own papers, by ship to London, so that, as he says, “not all the fruits of the expedition would be lost if I should be robbed or die on the way.” Next he informed von Gähler of his plans, so that the ambassador could arrange for money to be waiting for him if he reached Basra.
Finally, a decision had to be made on a quite different matter. To replace Berggren and to have help during his illness, Niebuhr had bought a sixteen-year-old Negro slave in Bombay: “The boy was born of African parents who were Catholic converts, and I allowed him to have instruction in Christianity from a Catholic priest; for in the beginning it had been my intention to take him with me to China and home to Denmark. But when I eventually decided to go via Basra, I decided instead to give him his freedom in Bombay for fear that the Muslims might take him from me. In Turkey it is not usual for Europeans to have slaves; and it might have been said that I wanted to take a boy born of Muslim parents with me to Europe to make a Christian of him.” Instead of the young Negro, Niebuhr engaged a Danish servant whose name is not mentioned and who came from Trankebar. Together they boarded a small English warship belonging to the East India Company, which was westward bound for the port of Muscat in South-east Arabia.
It was 8th December, 1764. Carsten Niebuhr had started on the long journey which, if all went well, would take him home to Copenhagen.
2
At the time when the Danish expedition was being organised, the intention was that Professor Michaelis in Göttingen should prepare a list of scholarly questions to which the members should try to find the answers during the journey. The efficient professor immediately set about formulating a series of questions, but the work so proliferated that when the expedition set out from Denmark it was far from complete. Later he managed to send odd questions to Forsskål and Niebuhr by letter, but the full list continued to be held up. When it was finally ready, it comprised a hundred questions, which together filled over six hundred beautifully handwritten pages, to judge from the examples still lodged in the State Archives. This enormous piece of work was sent after the expedition, but it only reached Carsten Niebuhr in Bombay.
Among the professor’s hundred questions, which touched on every conceivable subject down to what were all the various Arabic words for “mouse,” Niebuhr also found a request to investigate the extent to which the stars in the Orient shone less brightly than in the Scandinavian countries. On the trip from Bombay to Muscat he set about studying this. When the weather was calm he set up his astrolabe on deck, and by measuring the altitude at which the various stars appear above the horizon, he established that they shone no less brightly than at home. Indeed, rather the reverse. During the day he rested under an awning on the foredeck, listening to the rhythmical swish of the water against the bows and watching “whole armies” of porpoises disporting themselves ahead.
On Christmas Eve they were approaching the coast of Muscat. Here they were becalmed; the water was too deep to drop anchor and a strong current drove them forty-five miles in towards the dangerous rocky coast. The next day there was a strong on-shore wind, and the crew had to work day and night to prevent the ship from being battered on the rocks. It was a week before the situation improved; and on 3rd January, 1765, they entered the port of Muscat, where they anchored alongside Arab dhows loaded to the rails with dates and manned partly by former French mercenaries, the dispersed remnants of the defeated colonial armies who had suffered the terrible fate of having to work for Mohammedans.
From Muscat the English warship continued north through the Persian Gulf, but when Niebuhr learnt that it would shortly be followed by another English ship from Bombay which would also proceed north via Muscat, he disembarked. It arrived a couple of weeks later, just as he had finished collecting information for his report and his map. As he still did not feel strong enough to undertake a journey into the interior, and as no more ships were expected to sail north through the Gulf for some time, he left Muscat on 18th January with the new English ship, which set course for Bushire in Persia.
After the calm summer weather in the Indian Ocean, Niebuhr now faced the temperamental weather of the Persian Gulf. “N
ever have I seen the wind change so much and so quickly as during this trip. One minute it was calm and the next minute there was a howling gale, and often the wind would switch suddenly from one direction to the direct opposite. I will not, however, expatiate on the dangers we had to contend with in these conditions. Sailors are frequently exposed to such things, and it would be a little unreasonable if we others on our infrequent voyages took to bemoaning the dangers and inconveniences.” On this trip he crossed the path of later expeditions sent out from Denmark. Niebuhr inserts the following description in his diary of what was later to become their objective: the islands of Bahrein and Failaka.
“The island of Bahrein is said to have been so densely populated in olden times that one could count the ruins of 365 towns and villages. Now there is only a single town, with a few fortifications; and altogether one would not find more than about fifty villages, which are mostly very poor. The rest presumably have been gradually abandoned during the many wars which foreigners have inflicted on the island to conquer it. The pearl fishing is still famous, however. The inhabitants of Bahrein are all Shiites, and their language is Arabic. Various people have assured me, moreover, that some distance out from the coast, at a depth of two fathoms, wonderful fresh spring water is to be found, and that fishermen often collect drinking water here simply by diving down to the sea bed and filling their goat-skin bottles. Farther north there are various small uninhabited islands, and not far from the town of Kuwait there is an uninhabited island of Feludsje, which belongs to the Arabs. According to d’Anville it is called Peluche. The majority of its inhabitants came originally from Bahrein and mostly support themselves by pearl fishing.”
Arabia Felix Page 30
