Michael Asher - Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia

PENGUIN BOOKS

LAWRENCE

Asher probably gets nearer to the truth about him than any of his previous biographers By the end of this conscientiously researched book, the more impressive for Ashers knowledge of the Bedu tribes, one is left wondering whether he regrets the journey he has made to prove his childhood hero to be somewhat flawed Simon Courtauld, Spectator

This excellent biography is in part a pilgrimage, performed by an admirer with a felicitous blend of reverence and wry scepticism and a marvellous ability to convey a sense of place Lawrence James, Literary Review

Asher has written a book about his childhood hero that is thoughtful and balanced Moreover he reaches a conclusion about Lawrence that encompasses all other biographies, one that takes the ground out from under the never-ending controversy about probably the best-known Englishman, after Winston Churchill, this century Phillip Knightley, Mail on Sunday

This may well emerge as the best biography currently available Contemporary Review

He writes well and has new things to say not an easy thing in this desperately overcrowded field. His life of the Uncrowned King of Arabia has the balance that Aldingtons polemic so lamentably failed to provide Robert Irwin, London Review of Books

Asher himself, a former SAS man, is one of the greatest living desert explorers. Unlike other biographers, he gains his insights not only through the dust of libraries, but through the dazzling light of the dunes what follows is a careful exploration, stripping away myth (while avoiding crass revisionism), gazing into the complexity beneath a legend Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman

Michael Asher has served in the Parachute Regiment and the SAS, and studied English at the University of Leeds. He has made expeditions in many countries, always preferring to travel on foot or with animal transport. He lived for three years with a Bedu tribe totally unaffected by the outside world and, with his wife, Arabist and photographer Mariantonietta Peru, made the first west-east crossing of the Sahara on foot with camels a distance of 4,500 miles without technology or back-up of any kind. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has won both the Ness Award of the Royal Geographical Society and the Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for Exploration. In 1997 he and Mariantonietta Peru presented the documentary In Search of Lawrence for Channel 4, which was watched by 2.4 million people. Michael Asher has travelled a total of 16,000 miles by camel and is the author of eight books. Of these, Penguin also publish Shoot to Kill: A Soldiers Journey through Violence, Thesiger: A Biography and The Last of the Bedu: In Search of the Myth.

The Uncrowned King of Arabia

Michael Asher

With colour photographs by Mariantonietta Peru

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Viking 1998
Published in Penguin Books 1999
12

Copyright Michael Asher, 1998
Colour photographs copyright Mariantonietta Peru, 1998
Maps copyright Reg and Marjorie Piggott, 1998
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN:978-0-14-191009-3

For Mariantonietta

Arian Hok Buda

The story I have to tell is one of the most splendid ever given to a man for telling.

T. E. Lawrence to Vyvyan Richards

Il faut souffrir pour tre content.

T. E. Lawrence to Charlotte Shaw

COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS

Photography by Mariantonietta Peru

Lawrences Spring, Jordan

Pharaohs Island, off Sinai

Ruins of a traditional house, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

Ruins of mud houses, Hamra village, Saudi Arabia

Fallen locomotive, Hediyya station, Saudi Arabia

Hediyya bridge

Guweira plain from the Nagb ash-Shtar pass, Jordan

Atwi station, Jordan

Tent in the Wadi Rum, Jordan

Howaytat woman, Wadi Rum

The author with Sabah ibn Iid at Mudowwara well, Jordan

Loading a camel, Mudowwara well, Jordan

Wrecked railway wagon, Mudowwara

Bedui filling a waterskin

Bedui of the Haywat, Jordan

BLACK AND WHITE

T. E. Lawrence aged about ten or eleven, a studio photograph in Oxford, c. 1900

Sarah Lawrence with her children, in the porch of their home at Fawley, c. 1894

The City of Oxford High School for Boys. Lawrence surrounded by his form mates and their teacher, c. 1900

Portrait of Gray by Henry Scott Tuke

In the summer of 1909 Lawrence visited Kalaat al-Husn (Crak des Chevaliers)

The castle of Sahyun

The Norman keep at Safita, and Harran

Lawrence with Leonard Woolley at Carchemish

Carchemish

Salim Ahmad, nicknamed Dahoum, and Sheikh Hammoudi at Carchemish, 1911

Workmen at Carchemish, 1911

Lawrence in Arab dress

Lieut-Col. Stewart Newcombe, Royal Engineers

Camels, as ridden by Lawrence

Sharif Abdallah and Ronald Storrs at Jeddah, October 1916

Sharif Feisals army falling back on Yanbu on the coast of the Red Sea, December 1916

Feisals camp at dawn, December 1916

Feisal and his army captured Wejh in January 1917 and made it their headquarters for the next six months

Auda Abu Tayyi and his kinsmen, photographed by Lawrence in May 1917

Auda and Sharif Nasir at Wadi Sirhan, June 1917

Mohammad adh-Dhaylan with other Howaytat tribesmen

A Turkish patrol repairing a stretch of railway track near Maan

The bridge at Tel ash-Shehab

Nasib al-Bakri, one of the founders of the Arab Revolt

Dakhilallah al-Qadi, hereditary law-giver of the Juhayna

The capture of Aqaba, 6 July 1917, photographed by Lawrence

Aqaba fort from inland

The interior of Aqaba fort

Jaafar Pasha, Feisal and Pierce Joyce at Wadi Quntilla, August 1917

Nuri as-Said

The gate tower at Azraq

Turkish prisoners near Tafilah fort, January 1918

Sharif Zayd and other Arab leaders with captured Austrian guns at Tafilah

Lawrence at the army headquarters in Cairo, 1918