Carsten Niebuhr

Carsten Niebuhr

Carsten Niebuhr (born March 17, 1733 – died April 26, 1815) was a German traveler, explorer and surveyor, famous as the only survivor of the Danish expedition to the Middle East and India. The maps he made during this journey were used for more than hundred years.

Life

Carsten Niebuhr was born at Lüdingworth, in Lower Saxony (today’s Germany), the son of a small farmer. He had little education, and for several years of his youth had to do the work of a farmer. He, however had a talent 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 suggested 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 mathematics at the University of Goettingen for a year and a half before the expedition set out, and also managed to acquire some knowledge of Arabic.

The expedition team was assembled by 1760, including

1. Friedrich Christian von Haven (Danish linguist and orientalist),
2. Georg Baurenfeind (German artist),
3. Pehr Forsskål (Swedish botanist),
4. Christian Carl Kramer (Danish zoologist and physician), and
5. Berggren (Swedish soldier).

They sailed in January 1761, and landed at Alexandria, Egypt, after which it ascended up 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, in Yemen. Here in May 1763 the philologist of the expedition, von Haven, died, and was followed shortly after by the naturalist 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 learned to protect 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. Niebuhr returned to Copenhagen in November, 1767.

Niebuhr 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.

Work

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 observation. His works have long been classics on the geography, the people, the antiquities and the archaeology of much of Arabia, which he traversed. He made the first map of the Red Sea, which allowed British to plan their routes to India over Sues, instead of, as before around Africa.

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 was not 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). 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.

Legacy

After he returned to Denmark, Niebuhr made an official report on the expedition, published in 1772. The maps he drew showed particularly useful, and remained in use for over a hundred years. It opened new trading routes over Suez and across Middle East to India.

The University of Copenhagen dedicated its Institute for Oriental Studies to Niebuhr, naming it after him - the Carsten Niebuhr Institute.

Niebuhr’s son, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, became a famous German historian and philologist.

Publications

• Forsskål, Peter (Niebuhr, Carsten, Ed.). 1775. Descriptiones animalium, avium, amphibiorum, piscium, insectorum, vermium quæ in itinere orientali. Hauniæ [Copenhagen]: Ex Officina Moelleri, Aulæ Typographi
• Forsskål, Peter (Niebuhr, Carsten, Ed.). 1775. Flora Ægyptiaco-Arabia, sive, Descriptiones plantarum, quas per Ægyptum inferiorem et Arabiam felicem detexit. Hauniæ [Copenhagen]: Ex Officina Moelleri, Aulæ Typographi
• Niebuhr, Carsten. 1774. Description de l'Arabie. Amsterdam: S.J. Baalde
• Niebuhr, Carsten. 1994 (original published in 1772). Travels through Arabia and other countries in the East. Reading, UK: Garnet Pub. ISBN 1873938543

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Hansen, Thorkild. 1964. Arabia Felix: The Danish expedition of 1761-1767 . New York: Harper & Row.
• Niebuhr, Barthold G., Johann D. Michaelis, and Robinson. 1836. The life of Carsten Niebuhr, the oriental traveler. The Students' cabinet library of useful tracts, vol. 3, no. 1, whole no. 13. Edinburgh: T. Clark.
• Wiesehöfer, Josef, & Conermann, Stephan. 2002. Carsten Niebuhr, 1733-1815, und seine Zeit: Beiträge eines interdisziplinären Symposiums vom 7.-10. Oktober 1999 in Eutin. Oriens et occidens, Bd. 5. Stuttgart: F. Steiner.

External links

• Beschreibung von Arabien (Description of Arabia) – Full-text work by Niebuhr (1772) at the University of Göttingen.
• Carsten Niebuhr – Biography by Ray Howgego
• Carsten Niebuhr – Biography on Minnesota State University website
• In the steps of Carsten Niebuhr – Life and work of Carsten Niebuhr
• Carsten Niebuhr Institute – Website of the institute, the University of Copenhagen

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