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“This is the archetypal text of a European traveller who travels through the Arab and Islamic world. Carsten Niebuhr came from the borderlands between Germany and Denmark, and he’s in the service of the Danish crown. He’s part of a Danish exploratory expedition, one of many European expeditions in the 18th century…So when he travels across the Arabian peninsula, and then further east, he records meticulously what people say. This is the time when the Wahhabi movement was emerging on the Arabian peninsula. He encounters the Yazidi imams in Yemen, the Ibadis in Oman and Shia in the Gulf and Bahrain. He also goes to Iraq. He visits Karbala and the holy places in Iraq. Everywhere, he hears of people being afraid of the Wahhabis, and trying to mobilize their own resources to counter them.” Read more...
