Everything about Carsten Niebuhr totally explained
Carsten Niebuhr or
Karsten Niebuhr (
March 17,
1733 –
April 26,
1815) was a
German mathematician,
cartographer, and
explorer.
Biography
Niebuhr was born in
Lüdingworth in the
Electorate of Hanover, the son of a small
farmer. He had little education, and for several years of his youth had to do the work of a peasant. His bent was towards
mathematics, and he managed to obtain some lessons in
surveying. It was while he was working at this subject that one of his teachers, in
1760, proposed to him to join the expedition which was being sent out by
Frederick V of Denmark for the scientific exploration of
Egypt,
Arabia and
Syria.
To qualify himself for the work of
surveyor and
geographer, he studied hard at mathematics for a year and a half before the expedition set out, and also managed to acquire some knowledge of
Arabic. The expedition sailed in January
1761, and, landing at
Alexandria, ascended the
Nile. Proceeding to
Suez, Niebuhr made a visit to
Mount Sinai, and in October
1762 the expedition sailed from Suez to
Jeddah, journeying thence overland to
Mocha. Here in May
1763 the
philologist of the expedition,
von Haven, died, and was followed shortly after by the naturalist
Peter Forsskål.
Sana, the capital of
Yemen, was visited, but the remaining members of the expedition suffered so much from the climate or from the mode of life that they returned to Mocha.
Niebuhr seems to have saved his own life and restored his health by adopting the native habits as to dress and food. From Mocha the ship was taken to
Bombay, the artist of the expedition dying on the passage, and the surgeon soon after landing. Niebuhr was now the only surviving member of the expedition. He stayed fourteen months at Bombay, and then returned home by
Muscat,
Bushire,
Shiraz and
Persepolis, visited the ruins of
Babylon, and thence went to
Baghdad,
Mosul and
Aleppo. He seems to have visited the
Behistun Inscription in around 1764. After a visit to
Cyprus he made a tour through
Palestine, crossing the
Taurus Mountains to
Brussa, reaching
Constantinople in February
1767 and
Copenhagen in the following November. He married in
1773, and for some years held a post in the Danish military service which enabled him to reside at
Copenhagen. In
1778, however, he accepted a position in the civil service of Holstein, and went to reside at
Meldorf, where he died in 1815.
Niebuhr was an accurate and careful observer, had the instincts of the scholar, was animated by a high moral purpose, and was rigorously conscientious and anxiously truthful in recording the results of his observations. His works have long been classics on the geography, the people, the antiquities and the archaeology of much of the district of Arabia which he traversed. His first volume,
Beschreibung von Arabien, was published at Copenhagen in 1772, the Danish government defraying the expenses of the abundant illustrations. This was followed in 1774-1778 by two other volumes,
Reisebeschreibung von Arabien und anderen umliegenden Ländern. The fourth volume wasn't published till 1837, long after his death, under the editorship of Niebuhr's daughter. He also undertook the task of bringing out the work of his friend Forsskål, the naturalist of the expedition, under the titles of
Descriptiones animalium, Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, and
Icones rerum naturalium (Copenhagen, 1775-1776). To a German periodical, the
Deutsches Museum, Niebuhr contributed papers on the interior of
Africa, the political and military condition of the
Ottoman Empire, and other subjects.
French and
Dutch translations of his narratives were published during his lifetime, and a condensed English translation, by
Robert Heron, of the first three volumes in Edinburgh (1792). A facsimile of the 1792 translation “Travels through Arabia” by “M.Niebuhr”, in two volumes, was published by Libraire du Liban, Beirut, undated. His son
Barthold Georg Niebuhr published a short
Life at Kiel in 1817; an English version was issued in 1838 in the
Lives of Eminent Men, published by the
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. See
DG Hogarth,
The Penetration of Arabia ("Story of Exploration" series) (1904).
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