GREAT ARABIAN EXPLORER

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33514, 20 April 1974, Page 10

GREAT ARABIAN EXPLORER

Philby of Arabia. By Elizabeth Monroe. Faber and Faber. 297 pp, index, bibliography. (Reviewed by R.H.L.)

The name Philby has earned some notoriety in recent years as belonging to Kim Philby, a British Foreign Office official who was the “third man” in the Burgess-Maclean affair. Earlier, the name was raised to fame by H. St. John Philby, the great traveller in Arabia, who was friend, companion, and adviser for many years of Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia. Elizabeth Monroe’s excellent biography competently and objectively assesses the stature of St. John Philby. Kim Philby was his son.

St. John Philby had the orthodox start of a man of his class and times—public school and Cambridge. His family was not wealthy, and it was always necessary for the young Philby to win scholarships and prizes to progress. Luckily, he was endowed with intelligence above the ordinary. Especially did a flair for language help him when he passed into the Indian Civil Service where he won substantial rewards for passing with easy facility tests in languages and dialects. Philby did not have an easy time as an Indian civil servant, due chiefly to a life-long penchant for “always speaking his mind." Indeed, Philby’s was an abrasive, often arrogant character—to which this book bears abundant witness. A classic remark to another official, for years quoted against him is mentioned: “I can’t hear what Jou say. Edmonds, but I tin issue with you.” The impact of such a character on Kiplingesque India can be imagined. The whole pattern of Philby’s life changed when he was transferred as a linguist from India to Mesopotamia during the 1914-18 war. There, the campaign against the Turks was beset by political problems both among the native towndwellers and tribes and by disagreements between the British Government and the Indian Government, which was running the war in Mesopotamia. In particular, there was conflict about handling the desert rivals, the Hashemite family of the Sharif of Mecca, and the then desert princeling, Ibn Saud. leader of the religiously fanatical Wahhabi sect. In Cairo, the

British Government’s Arab Bureau was organising the famous Revolt in the Desert, with T. E. Lawrence its mainspring. The tribes in central Arabia were no part of this movement, and indeed were in bitter enmity with the Hashemites. It became high policy to prevent them from giving aid to the Turks, and Philby became a chief instrument in furthering this policy. The first of his great desert journeys came when he led a mission into the unmapped centre of Arabia. The journey across central Arabia from east to west that won Philby his first fame as an explorer had only once before been made by an Englishman—in 1819. This journey led to Philby’s first association with Ibn Saud, an association that was to continue—with breaks—until the by then undisputed (by conquest) ruler of most of the Arabian peninsula died in 1953. The course she traces of this relationship makes a fascinating major theme of Elizabeth Monroe’s book.

As far as a few chapters allow, the author gives a revealing summary of the exceedingly complicated Middle East politics of the years after the First World War, years in which the Hashemite family played big parts in British policy—providing kings for the British mandated territories of Iraq and Transjordan—but being expelled from Mecca by Ibn Saud. In these politics, Philby’s was a strong, and often unwelcome, voice. Philby became a strong advocate for Arab independence. Indeed, what he saw as Britain’s betrayal of the Arabs became a lasting obsession. In pursuit of his ideas, Philby showed flaws in judgment that are not glossed over by the author.

Often in conflict with official policy, Philby left the British Government’s service in 1924. Several lean years followed, but he came into his own and earned lasting fame with his great Arabian journeys of the early 1930’5. The author gives us graphic descriptions of journeys by camel across great unmapped, waterless wastes, where >t often seems that only resolution approaching fanaticism drove the explorer onwards.

Space-age viewers can scarcely conceive the excitement created in the early years of this century by feats of terrestial exploration and endurance. On his

return to London, Philby became a hero, and from writing and lecturing, penury was behind him. He benefited in other respects. Observing that fame is a tonic to most of us, the author says, “it was so with Philby, his view of life altered. He- ceased to need extraneous boosts to his self-esteem; he gave up fulminatory writings for the press; he took pleasure in his family.”

With Philby this could not last. He became a controversionalist again over issues leading to the Second World War. Holding that “no cause whatever is worth the spilling of human blood” (Ibn Saud’s wars excepted, the author remarks) Philby wanted agreement with the Germans. But immediately war broke out he offered his services to the British Government as an Arabist. Not surprisingly, he was not given a post. Back in Arabia on business affairs he displeased the British authorities by gloomy prophecies about the outcome of the war. To Ibn Saud (according to the King) he never ceased heaping curses and insults on the British Government. Ibn Saud tired of him. Return to England was arranged, and on his arrival in Liverpool in October 1940, Philby was arrested for “activities prejudicial to the safety of the realm” and was interned for some months.

In 1945, his passport was restored and he made a beeline for the Middle East. Arrived in Cairo, Ibn Saud’s own plane—a present from President Rooseveltarrived to carry him on in luxury to Jidda. Old times were back. By now, Ibn Saud was becoming oil-rich, and Philby was able to share in this prosperity. His right of entry to the King’s palace was restored. As a mark of favour. Ibn Saud took him to Cairo on a State mission. And the King gave him a new “jiviya” — an Arab girl for wife. (Philby for many years now had been a Muslim and allowed more than one wife). His relationship with his English wife, Dora, is another constant thread in the story the author tells, a thread that suffered manv strains, but endured.

Philby undertook many more great Arabian journeys from 1950 to 1953. Arabia was not now so mysterious. Geologists and surveyors in search of oil had lifted many veils. Consequently. the purposes of

Philby’s explorations were no longer exploratory, but searches for Arabia’s preIslamic history. For his work he earned the acclaim of Arabists everywhere. Philby’s business affairs in Arabia prospered, but having become critical of extravagancies he saw in the court of Ibn Saud’s successor, he overstepped the mark again, and once more was banished. So ended a dual life he had lived — Englishman and Arab, lives lived in two compartments, coexistent but separate. He died in September, 1960. His tombstone is inscribed: “Greatest of Arabian explorers.”

Philby is often bracketed with Lawrence because they both worked in the Arab field, but the author observes that they were opposites in their handling of its arbiters. “Where Lawrence rightly judged the tempo that suited men in power and was able to cajole them into doing as he advised. Philby, hectoring, intemperate and opinionated, provoked their wrathand lost his case.” Yet his. achievements are beyond questioning.

Elizabeth Monroe, author of this first-class biography of a strange man of extremes, is a historian of the modern Middle East. She knows both Philby’s British and Arab families and she has travelled in all the countries in which Philby worked. She is an emeritus fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and in 1973 was awarded the C.M.G. for her services to Middle East studies.