Wilfred Thesiger Photo Collection at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum

Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003) is known as the last of the great Western explorers and travelers. He was the first European to have crossed the heart of the lifeless Empty Quarter (al-Rub’ al-Khali), the great South-East Arabian sand desert.  Before him, Bertram Thomas and Harry St-John Bridger Philby traveled around the edges of that desert, which Thesiger crossed twice, on foot and camel back.

Thesiger, who is otherwise known for two books, “Arabian Sands”, and the “Marsh Arabs”, both classics of travel literature, was also a talented photographer, who donated his extensive collection of negatives to Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum. A hundred of Thesiger’s less know photos for Arabia, Asia and Africa, is available for viewing on the museum’s website, including the one just below.

Note the 1948 picture of a youthful, bare-footed Shaykh Zayed B. Sultan al-Nahyan, then Shaykh of Abu Dhabi, and later (as of 1971) ruler of the United Arab Emirates. Also note the nice picture of the Yemeni port of Mukalla (below), which I visited in the summer of 2008.

Also, read Thesiger’s 2003 obituary in the Guardian, here.