Sold – Lawrence of Arabia: Bedouin Arabs Have a Stone Age Mentality

Lawrence first journeyed to the Middle East in December 1910 where he studied Arabic in preparation for joining the 1911 British Museum excavation of Syria’s ancient city of Charchemish. After the season’s dig ended in July, Lawrence embarked on a walking tour through Syria to study crusader castles. Although he writes in the following letter that his study was both lost and worthless, it was in fact published in two volumes in 1936, a year after his death, as Crusader Castles.

He returned numerous times to work at Charchemish and in 1914 he left for the Turkish-controlled Sinai Peninsula where, under the guise of a field trip, he participated in a British military survey and mapping project. It included portions of the Negev Desert and Wadi Arabah. The observations were published as The Wilderness of Zin. At the outbreak of World War I Lawrence joined the General Staff’s Geographical Section and when Turkey, Germany’s ally, entered the war, British Military Intelligence sent him to Cairo. This was natural, as his years in the desert and resultant intimate knowledge of Middle Eastern geography, Arabic and the Bedouin tribes that roamed the region would be invaluable.

The war in the Middle East did not go well for the British in the early days of the conflict. Their defeat at Gallipoli and inability to dislodge the Turks from the Dardanelles exposed the Suez Canal to potential attack. Meanwhile, the Arabs viewed the involvement of the Ottoman Empire in the war as an opportunity to revolt and drive the Turks from their land. Seeing in this a chance to harass the Turks, the British lent support to the Arabs through shipments of arms and money. The revolt sputtered, however, and was by 1916 in danger of collapsing. Lawrence was sent to bring order and direction to the Arab cause.

The experience transformed the introverted and studious Lawrence into one of the most colorful military figures of the war. For two years Lawrence and his band of Arab irregulars attacked Turkish strongholds, severed communications, destroyed railways and supported the British regular army in the drive north to Damascus. His leadership brought success and he entered Damascus with the Arab tribesmen to prepare the way for King Faisal. He then attended the Peace Conference at Versailles with the Arab delegation. By this time, probably no westerner had a more intimate knowledge of the Arabs than Lawrence, nor a greater degree of their trust. Lawrence would later record his exploits as well as the Arab revolt in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and its abbreviated version Revolt in the Desert.

Being successful and colorful brought fame and notoriety in large doses, and Lawrence came to despise his status as a celebrity. After the war he sought escape from it all by joining the Royal Air Force under the assumed name of T.E. Shaw. The secrecy with which he deliberately surrounded himself in his later years contributed, no doubt, to his mystique. Henry Field was an assistant curator of Physical Anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. He spent much time in the Middle East on anthropological and archeological research and published hundreds of books and articles in a long career. Field met and corresponded with Lawrence as part of his research, and the results were ultimately published in his book, Arabian Desert Tales Between the Two Great Wars. The following letter, along with an account of their meeting, is also published in that book.

Autograph Letter Signed on both sides of a single sheet, Plymouth, England, April 26, 1929, to Field, giving a virtual guide to Arabian topography, making some interesting cultural observations, and expressing some very surprising and significant opinions about the Bedouin Arabs, with whom he lived and worked so long. In reading, it is useful to know that “eolithic” and “paleolithic”are both defined as relating to the Stone Age, the paleolithic being an earlier period within it. “I’m very grateful to you for the little article. Your work in the Syrian desert should be very interesting. It’s always, I think, in the lava regions that one finds the best ruins (and the best grass, when it rains), and to date them, somehow, would be very interesting. They are more difficult than the sites in Europe – for there is no patina to go by, on flint: flints colour in less than 20 years, as Wooley and I found in Sinai. Do you know our sketchy little volume, The Wilderness of Zin, written for the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1912? It was got out in a hurry for reasons of politics, and is bad. There’s also the snag that the Bedouin today is eolithic, when lazy; and palaeolithic, when he wants a decent flint to trim his toe-nails. If you can, go into the Gara district, a lava field 80 miles S.E. from Wejh [Al Wajh], in Hejaz. Ibn Saud would probably let you, if you approached him through Philby, who’s a good scientist and lives at Jiddah now. The Harrat el-Gaara is full of circles and grave-cairns, of black dolerite. I’m afraid I haven’t anything on the castles of the Middle East. The rumor must have come from a thesis I wrote for my Oxford History degree on Crusader castles of Syria. It was an elementary performance, and I think it has been destroyed or left behind somewhere, in the course of my life. At any rate, I haven’t a notion where it is – but a strong memory that it was worthless. I’m afraid our Thlaithikhwat tracks will be in the desert for generations. As for the “kites”, I fancy a big tribe like the Rualla might put them up, when pasturing all their camels together. A quite low wall is an obstacle for a camel, and the herdsmen could sleep safely in the open side, while the beasts grazed. Herding camels is an awful business, and people like the Ghassanide Ôkings’ must have been much more organized than Nuri Shaalan’s crowd, and prepared to put their herdsmen to more trouble than he can afford. If ever you are in England write to me here, or ring up someone at the Air Ministry, if you know anyone there, and let us meet. But I warn you that the mountain may have to come to Mohammed. The Air Force does not give its slaves great leisureÉ P.S. Do you know that many of the tribal wasms are Himyari letters?” It is signed “T. E. Shaw”.

“Eolithic, when lazy; and palaeolithic, when he wants a decent flint to trim his toe-nails” – can be restated as primitive when not energized, and even more primitive when energized. This is an astonishing statement for Lawrence to make and reveals volumes about his thoughts on the Bedouin Arabs. Also of great interest is his finishing the letter with a quote from Mohammed (who had decided to demonstrate that he was God’s messenger by moving a mountain by the power of his faith. After three days of trying without success, he gave up and said, “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain”). As for other allusions in the letter, Field notes that the Thlaithikhwat tracks Lawrence refers to are near the “tall peaks known as ‘The Three Sisters’ north of Bayir Wells” in Jordan.

The lava fields Lawrence mentions are discussed in his book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The Ghassan rulers are referred to as “kings” rather than sheikhs because, though they were native rulers, they were within the Byzantine Empire. Lawrence compares them favorably to Nuri Shaalan, ruler of the Anazeh tribesmen, who in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he calls “the great Emir of the Ruwalla, who, after the Sherif and ibn Saud and ibn Rashid, was the fourth figure among the precarious princes of the desert.” This letter also mentions Ibn-Saud, founder of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which at the time had not yet been formally established. Lawrence also advises Field to speak to Harry Philby, a British explorer sent to Arabia by the British foreign service who became Ibn-Saud’s advisor. In his postscript Lawrence mentions “wasms,” which Field notes in his book are “tribal marks branded on camels.” The original envelope in his hand is included.