Danish Arabia expedition
Expedition led by Carsten Niebuhr
The Danish Arabia expedition (Danish: Den Arabiske Rejse) was a Danish scientific expedition to Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. Its principal goal was to elucidate the Old Testament with additional research goals concerned with natural history, geography, and cartography. The expedition began in 1761. It had six members, of whom only Carsten Niebuhr survived, returning to Denmark in 1767. The journey has been chronicled by the 20th century novelist, Thorkild Hansen, in his novel Arabia Felix.
Members
Six people went on the expedition, and five died. † denotes which members died on the expedition.
Peter Forsskål†: Finnish/Swedish natural scientist and student of Carl Linnaeus; his main task was to find supporting evidence for a number of Linnaeus' accounts.
Frederik Christian von Haven†: Philologist, was tasked to purchase oriental manuscripts and to transcribe inscriptions. Furthermore, to make observations on the Arabic language, with a focus to help on the obscure passages of the Old Testament.
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This entry incorporates text from “Danish Arabia expedition” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.