Timeframe: When Sheikh Zayed honoured Sir Wilfred Thesiger in Abu Dhabi

British explorer and author had a close friendship with the UAE and its Founding Father

UAE Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, receiving Sir Wilfred Thesiger in Abu Dhabi. Photo: Wam

The late, great British explorer and author Sir Wilfred Thesiger's life story is inextricably linked with the history of the UAE.

He's known, among many other accomplishments, for his 1959 literary masterpiece Arabian Sands, which documented his gruelling crossing and recrossing of the Empty Quarter, taking in today's UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman.

But also well known was his close friendship with UAE Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, whom he met on many occasions, the first time in 1947.

On February 20, 2000, three years before Thesiger's death, Sheikh Zayed honoured him with the Order of Independence, one of the UAE's highest awards. Then 89, Thesiger was decorated with the sash by Sheikh Zayed's son, Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who was then the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, at a special ceremony in Bateen Palace.

“The decoration, presented on the instructions of President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, was awarded to Thesiger in recognition of his long friendship for the people of the Emirates and his service to the country,” Sheikh Hamdan said, as was reported then by state news agency Wam.

Thesiger said he accepted the decoration with “feelings of great honour and pleasure.”

“The journeys across the Empty Quarter for which it was awarded have always been the most important journeys that I have made,” he added. “These journeys over 50 years ago were made possible for me by the assistance and encouragement which I received from Sheikh Zayed.”

Writing in The National in 2019, the late author and cultural historian Peter Hellyer, who also met Thesiger on many of his visits to the UAE, recalled the occasion with great pride.

Sir Wilfred Thesiger during the second crossing of the Empty Quarter in 1948. Photo: Wilfred Thesiger

“A few years before his death, I attended the ceremony in which he was given a medal awarded to him by Sheikh Zayed. One of Sheikh Zayed’s sons presented it to him and I recall, with amusement, a conversation about Sheikh Zayed’s age,” Hellyer writes. “Thesiger said: 'I am now nearly 90. Looking back to when we first met in 1947, he must have been around 30. So now he must be over 80.'

“Sheikh Zayed’s son laughed, saying: 'None of us would dare to tell him he was that old!'”

One of the last great European explorers, Thesiger first visited the UAE in 1946 during an epic journey across the Empty Quarter with several Bedu companions. He made further journeys in the area between 1947 and 1950, including a second crossing of the Empty Quarter. His journeys became the basis of Arabian Sands, which provides a unique record of life in the deserts of south-eastern Arabia before the discovery of oil.

Thesiger was also an expert photographer, his pictures capturing the people and scenery of Arabia before modernisation. He photographed an incredible 35,000 images of Abu Dhabi and the surrounding areas, including those of Sheikh Zayed. A companion coffee table book to Arabian Sands, called Crossing Sands, was also released later, which Thesiger dedicated to Sheikh Zayed.

Wilfred Thesiger, centre, at Qasr Al Hosn in Abu Dhabi. Photo: Pitt Rivers Museum

Thesiger wrote many other books, including The Marsh Arabs, The Last Nomad, The Life of My Choice and Visions of a Nomad.

In Arabian Sands, he described Abu Dhabi as a “small dilapidated town which stretched along the shore”. He also wrote about how he and his companions sat outside the walls of the imposing Qasr Al Hosn fort near some small cannons that were half-buried in sand, as they waited to be admitted. Eventually they were ushered in to meet Sheikh Shakhbut, the then Ruler of Abu Dhabi, who lived there.

The group remained in Abu Dhabi for 20 days, staying in a dilapidated house near the market. The town then had 2,000 inhabitants.

The cover of Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger. Photo: Penguin UK

“Each morning the sheikhs visited us, walking slowly across from the castle,” he wrote. “We talked for an hour or more, drinking coffee and eating sweets, and, after they had left us, we visited the market, where we sat cross-legged in the small shops, gossiping and drinking more coffee.”

Of Sheikh Zayed, Thesiger wrote: “He had a great reputation among the Bedu. They liked him for his easy, informal ways and his friendliness, and they respected his force of character, his shrewdness and his physical strength.

“They said admiringly ‘Zayed is a Bedu. He knows about camels, can ride like one of us, can shoot, and knows how to fight’.”

Thesiger died in London on August 24, 2003, at the age of 93. Sheikh Zayed passed away a year later, on November 2, 2004, during Ramadan. He was 84.