Arabia Felix Read online

  This state of affairs, however, had not leaked out to the Press. When, a week later, on 12th January, 1761, the front page of the Copenhagen Post (Kiøbenhavnske Danske Posttidende) carried the news, the announcement ran as follows:

  “As His Majesty, despite the heavy cares of government in these evil times, strives indefatigably for the furtherance of knowledge and of science and for the greater glory of his people, he has dispatched a few days ago by the vessel Greenland a group of scholars, who will travel by way of the Mediterranean to Constantinople, and thence through Egypt to Arabia Felix, and subsequently return by way of Syria to Europe; they will on all occasions seek to make new discoveries and observations for the benefit of scholarship, and will also collect and dispatch hither valuable Oriental manuscripts, together with other specimens and rarities of the East. The company consists of the following persons: 1. Professor Friedrich Christian von Haven, Philologus; 2. Professor Peter Forsskål, Physicus and Botanicus; 3. Engineer-Lieutenant Carsten Niebuhr, Mathematicus and Astronomus; 4. Dr. Christian Carl Kramer, Medicus and Physicus; and 5. Herr Georg Wilhelm Baurenfeind, artist and engraver. These men will remain for several years in the Orient, and as they have already spent several years in careful preparation for this undertaking, it can be confidently expected that their industry and their abilities will, with God’s blessing, have happy consequences both for the advancement of knowledge in general and for the more accurate interpretation of the Holy Scriptures in particular.”

  It was with these great expectations that the Danish expedition to Arabia set out. It was the first large-scale expedition that Denmark had ever dispatched, and it was the first from any country in the world to be sent to Arabia. Even in its own day, therefore, the Danish expedition aroused great interest. All Europe, eager as it was for knowledge in that Age of Enlightenment, followed this audacious undertaking with the keenest attention; and scholars from all the leading universities of the Continent sent questions to the expedition’s members in the hope that they might provide answers to them in the course of their investigations in these unknown lands. For the remainder of the century this “Arabian Journey,” as it was called, was highly esteemed for the many new discoveries which it made possible, despite all its misfortunes; over a hundred years later, English explorers were referring to “Carsten Niebuhr’s expedition” with the greatest respect. To-day, two hundred years after their expedition, they are almost completely forgotten.

  The Greenland sailed from Copenhagen in 1761; but the real beginning of the enterprise was in May of 1756, when a distinguished German theologian and orientalist, Johann David Michaelis of Göttingen University, approached J. H. E. Bernstorff, the Danish Foreign Minister. Michaelis had been struck by one of the original ideas for which he was well known. He suggested to Bernstorff that some of the missionaries who were regularly sent every year to Trankebar should be trained to explore Southern Arabia.

  Now Göttingen was the university city of Hanover; and as Hanover was at this time linked with England by personal ties, English empiricism had gained a stronger foothold here than elsewhere on the Continent. Professor Michaelis was a deist and an empiricist. He had abandoned the old conception of the Bible as a book in which every word was inspired by God and consequently inviolate: he regarded the Scriptures as ordinary texts, subject to independent historical and linguistic criticism. In the course of his studies, it had occurred to him that a journey to Arabia might throw light on a whole series of problems in connection with a linguistic analysis of the Holy Scriptures. For example, it might be possible to find, examine and identify plants and animals to be found in Arabia which were also mentioned in the Bible; it would be possible to study the geography of Arabia, and in particular the Red Sea tides, a matter of great significance for an understanding of the flight from Egypt. Finally, Michaelis fancied that the investigators could also study the Arabs’ daily habits and customs, and their architecture. His idea here was that as there were only a few places left on earth where so conservative a people as the Arabs could still be found, there was a good chance of finding in Arabia cultural forms similar to those of ancient Israel—better even than in Palestine itself, which in the intervening centuries had been exposed to numerous foreign influences.

  To ensure that the missionaries who were intended to travel from Trankebar to Arabia should have a thorough preliminary training, Michaelis suggested in his letter to Bernstorff that the Danish Government should give a three-year scholarship to two students at the University of Göttingen, to give them sufficient training to come to Copenhagen and instruct the missionaries concerned. The two students whom Michaelis wanted to recommend for this task were a Norwegian by the name of Ström, and a Dane called von Haven, both of whom had distinguished themselves in his linguistic class.

  The professor’s suggestion found an immediate echo in the mind of the Hanoverian Bernstorff, to whom artistic and scholarly affairs meant a great deal. All that the Danish Government requested was a more precise itinerary, whereupon Michaelis simplified his original plan and suggested training a student who could himself undertake the journey to Arabia. Michaelis admitted that this would be more expensive, but felt that it was more defensible on scholarly grounds. As a candidate for the appointment, he proposed his pupil Ström.

  By the beginning of October, Bernstorff was already able to report to Michaelis that King Frederick V had given his approval to the plan and had accepted the nomination of Ström. As the latter was primarily a linguist, it had been decided in Copenhagen to appoint a botanist to accompany him.

  In the event, neither of these two ever arrived in Arabia Felix. The other candidate, the Dane von Haven, felt that he had been insultingly ignored. When he learnt of Ström’s appointment, he wrote to Bernstorff to tell him that Ström was in fact terrified at the thought of undertaking an expedition of this nature; at the same time, he felt His Excellency should know that if Ström were not able to subdue his apprehensions about the journey and decided to decline the royal offer, then he, von Haven, would be very pleased to take his place; it had always been his desire to undertake such an expedition, and to defy the dangers that went with it. Von Haven then turned to his fellow student in Göttingen. During the next few days, he seems to have shown himself something of an expert on the dangers of Arabian travel. In any case, Ström soon approached Michaelis with a request to be relieved of his task. Von Haven could be pleased that all the terrifying exigencies he had described suddenly seemed to disappear. Except that the fates seem thoughtfully to have noted his every word.

  Michaelis had selected Ström only after trying in vain to convince von Haven that his constitution was less suited to a journey in Arabia than the Norwegian’s. Now that the latter had withdrawn, Michaelis found it difficult to refuse to have von Haven; he therefore proposed him to Bernstorff: “Magister von Haven, a student at this university, was from the very beginning jealous when he heard that the choice had fallen upon Ström; he informed me that he himself had long cherished plans of this nature, and that it was precisely for this reason that he had begun several years ago to attend my Oriental lectures. He has the greatest desire to undertake this expedition, and is thus in possession of a quality that can be acquired neither by instruction nor for money. He is also fairly familiar with the necessary auxiliary disciplines, including botany.” Only a few years later, Michaelis was to send another letter to Bernstorff, in which he found himself obliged to deny, more or less sentence by sentence, the terms of this recommendation. By that time, however, it was too late.

  As a condition of his joining the expedition, von Haven demanded a period of two years’ preparatory study, together with an annual subsidy of five hundred Rigsdaler. A month later, on 2nd November, 1756, Bernstorff informed Michaelis that von Haven had been accepted.

  Von Haven thereupon devoted himself to his preparations, but was soon seized by certain doubts; he feared he was unable to cope alone with such extensive material. In the spring of 1757, Michaelis had to inf
orm Bernstorff that von Haven did not consider himself able to master all the mathematics necessary for the expedition, and that the group ought therefore to include a mathematician, who could look after the geographical research. It was presumed that this mathematician would only be von Haven’s assistant, and that von Haven as the first to be appointed would himself retain command.

  This addition to the budget was also accepted by Bernstorff; but it proved difficult to find a suitable person. Michaelis suggested a Swede by the name of Söderberg, but this had to be abandoned because the man had been implicated in an attempted revolution in his own country and exiled. There seemed to be nobody in Copenhagen who could take on this responsibility; Bölzing, a German, after considering the matter for some time withdrew his acceptance. In the summer of 1758, time was getting so short that there was no alternative but to select a certain student of Göttingen for the job. This was a quite young and completely unknown man. His name was Carsten Niebuhr.

  Shortly after the appointment of the mathematician, Bernstorff was told that the botanist originally chosen to accompany von Haven had also withdrawn. Michaelis urged that a replacement should be found as soon as possible. This also proved very difficult, but on 1st January, 1759, the German professor sent Bernstorff a more cheerful letter: “At last I have found somebody who is eminently suited to act as botanist on the Arabian Journey, somebody who indeed almost exceeds my expectations, a former student of mine, in fact, by the name of Forsskål, Swedish by birth. Before he ever came to me, he had studied Arabic and he has also distinguished himself in botany—and indeed in natural history in general. He need not undergo any preparatory training at all. His one fault is an almost excessive scepticism, but this makes him if possible even more suited for the expedition.”

  Once again the enthusiastic professor had expressed himself in glowing terms; but this time he had no occasion to regret his words. Bernstorff replied to Michaelis by return, saying that he accepted this proposal and authorising the professor to negotiate with Forsskål about the details.

  In place of the original project—to train a couple of students who would then instruct missionaries chosen for the journey—an independent scholarly expedition was being established. The reason for the Danish king’s ready acceptance of the project must be sought in the general climate of the age. It had become fashionable to support the arts and sciences. Frederick the Great of Prussia, who was spending his leisure hours at Sans Souci in philosophical discussions with Voltaire or in playing the flute with Johann Sebastian Bach, had set Frederick of Denmark an example. And if the Danish Frederick in his leisure hours preferred to give himself over to the kind of philosophical or musical diversion from which he had to be carried home helpless, nevertheless both he and his adviser, the coolly calculating Moltke, fully appreciated the respect and popularity to be reaped from an open-handed policy towards the arts.

  These men made no mistake. They knew that by supporting the arts and sciences they were staking a claim to future fame, and in those distant days the future did not suddenly stop at the next election day. There was a genuine desire to be remembered a little longer than that. Men were naïve enough to have some sense of history, and they therefore attached some weight to being remembered with affection, remembered even by men as remote as those living in the land some two hundred years later. They built Amalienborg. They invited the German poet Klopstock to complete his Messiah in Denmark, and gave him a generous pension. They entered into competition with Sweden, where the mighty Linné (Linnaeus) was winning ever greater glory for science; they invited the botanist Oeder to lay out a botanical garden in Copenhagen, and they supported the publication of the incredibly expensive Flora Danica. They set up a natural history museum at Charlottenborg, and founded a Royal Academy of Arts. In spite of the threat of war and the difficulties of state finance, these statesmen managed to carry out a bold and varied cultural programme; and one of the best ideas in that programme was this Arabian Journey. Not only was it an attempt to do something altogether new; but by combining the scholarly with the exotic, it was possible to gratify simultaneously two of the greatest obsessions of the age—the great interest in science, and the enthusiasm for foreign and particularly Oriental lands which left its mark on the whole of the later eighteenth century in Europe. And since the prime purpose of the expedition was to gather material that might contribute to a better understanding of the Scriptures, the whole idea was completely unassailable. The wily Bernstorff could confidently give his eager professor in Göttingen a free hand. Here Frederick the Little had a card in his hand which even the King of Prussia could not beat.

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  The appointment of von Haven, Forsskål and Niebuhr meant that Bernstorff and Michaelis had now acquired the nucleus of the coming expedition. As the first of these was a linguist and ethnologist, the second a botanist and zoologist, and the third a mathematician and astronomer, it was hoped that they would fit in with each other in the best possible way. But these expectations were confounded. As scholars, they did form a unit; but as men, they were so completely at variance that the desired unity took on more the nature of a drama.

  Of the three, the Dane was the first to be appointed and also the eldest. Friedrich Christian von Haven was born in 1727, the son of a clergyman in Vester Skerninge in southern Fyn. Little is known about the early years of his life, except that he lost his father when he was eleven. His mother was a Marie Wielandt, possibly a sister of the fashionable publisher and printer Jochum Wielandt of Copenhagen, who made a fortune by publishing light reading and also laid the foundations of the Danish daily press. In spite of her husband’s early death, Marie managed to keep up the education of her son. At the age of eighteen, in 1745, von Haven left Odense to become a student. Only three years later he took his examinations in theology, and after another two years, his master’s degree in philology. He then concentrated on Oriental languages, starting, it seems, with Hebrew, and moved on to Göttingen to attend the lectures of the famous Professor Michaelis.

  When von Haven was accepted for the Arabian Journey in place of Ström he was twenty-nine years old. His letters of this period—written in correct and graceful French—give us the impression of a talented young man of the world, for whom academic studies were more of a pleasant pastime than a serious calling. He seems to have been fairly easy-going, well-informed but not learned, cunning but not very acute, elegant but not distinguished. The way he outmanœuvred his fellow student Ström gives us an indication of his character; yet he must have had considerable charm, to judge from the concessions he succeeded in gaining from such important people as Bernstorff and Michaelis. Since he had managed to continue so far with his studies despite his father’s early death, it seems likely that by 1756 he had already incurred considerable debts. According to certain remarks made later which are difficult to disregard it was some such debt and not primarily “a desire to defy danger” that supplied the real motive for his putting pressure on Michaelis. Probably at the beginning he did not reckon on this mad project ever coming off. For von Haven, apparently, Arabia Felix meant principally a delightful source of financial support. His terms for joining the expedition were a substantial period in which to prepare himself by study, and an annual grant from the Danish king.

  Originally von Haven was to be allowed only two years for this preparation, together with 500 Rigsdaler per annum, or about £2,500 in present-day money. Nevertheless, and without assuming any particular responsibilities, he succeeded in getting both amounts more than doubled. No sooner had he been appointed than he managed to delay his departure by urging that a mathematician be found to help him. The following year he spent in studying Arabic under Michaelis; but in the spring of 1758 he grew tired of these studies, sought out Bernstorff in Copenhagen and suggested a further delay. Bernstorff was to persuade the King to provide an extra grant to enable von Haven to go to Rome in order to learn Syrian and Arabic at the Collegio Maronitico. The argument he used to Bernstorff was that in R
ome he could learn spoken Arabic, something which was not possible in Göttingen.

  For once, Bernstorff seems to have had misgivings. He asked for Michaelis’s opinion; the German professor requested three weeks in which to think it over, and when eventually his answer arrived in the summer of 1758, it was unfavourable. After taking the advice of various Arabic experts, Michaelis had come to the conclusion that “in order to learn modern Arabic and Syrian, this journey to Rome is not in the least necessary.” There had been nobody in Rome at any time in the last two hundred years who could speak Arabic; and even if one or two might be found there, their dialect would be Syrian, not that of Arabia Felix. The only reason Michaelis could conceive for such a journey was that in Rome von Haven would have an opportunity to study certain Oriental manuscripts which could not be found elsewhere.

  Michaelis’s answer, therefore, was in the negative. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, on 9th September, 1758, Bernstorff informed Michaelis that he had agreed to let von Haven go to Rome, and had increased his yearly grant by a sum which would be sufficient to cover the expenses of his journey. His task in Rome was to be “to gain practice in reading and copying Oriental manuscripts.”