WThomas Barger was an American geologist, explorer, miner, businessman and former CEO of the Arabian American Oil Company.
WGertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist who explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her knowledge and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. Along with T. E. Lawrence, Bell helped support the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan as well as in Iraq.
WJames Theodore Bent was an English explorer, archaeologist and author.
WMabel Virginia Anna Bent, was an Anglo-Irish explorer, excavator, writer and photographer. With her husband, J. Theodore Bent (1852–1897), she spent two decades (1877–1897) travelling, collecting and researching in remote regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Africa, and Arabia.
WRobin ("Rob") Leonard Bidwell was an English orientalist and author. He published many books about Yemen and Arabia as well as about French and British colonial history.
WHermann Burchardt was a German explorer and photographer of Jewish descent, who is renowned for his black and white pictorial essays of scenes in Arabia in the early 20th century.
WJohann Ludwig Burckhardt was a Swiss traveller, geographer and orientalist. Burckhardt assumed the moniker Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah during his travels in Arabia. He wrote his letters in French and signed Louis. He is best known for rediscovering the ruins of the ancient Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan.
WSir Richard Francis Burton was a British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer, Freemason, and diplomat. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.
WCharles Montagu Doughty was an English poet, writer, explorer, adventurer and traveller born in Theberton Hall near Saxmundham, Suffolk and educated at private schools in Laleham and Elstree, and at a school for the Royal Navy, Portsmouth. He was a student at King's College London, eventually graduating from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1864.
WEduard Glaser was an Austrian Arabist and archaeologist. He was one of the first Europeans to explore South Arabia. He collected thousands of inscriptions in Yemen that are today held by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
WJoseph Halévy was an Ottoman born Jewish-French Orientalist and traveller.
WHannu, Hennu or Henenu was an Egyptian noble, serving as m-r-pr "majordomo" to Mentuhotep III in the 20th century BC. He reportedly re-opened the trade routes to Punt and Libya for the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. He was buried in a tomb in Deir el-Bahri, in Theban Necropolis, which has been catalogued as TT313.
WIbn Battuta was a Muslim Berber-Moroccan scholar and explorer who widely travelled the Old World, travelling more than any other explorer in history, totaling around 117,000 km, surpassing Zheng He with about 50,000 km and Marco Polo with 24,000 km. Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the Old World, including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, China, and the Iberian Peninsula. Near the end of his life, he dictated an account of his journeys, titled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, but commonly known as The Rihla.
WLieutenant-Colonel Gerard Evelyn Leachman, CIE, DSO was an English soldier and intelligence officer who travelled extensively in Arabia.
WCarsten Niebuhr, or Karsten Niebuhr, was a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer in the service of Denmark. He is renowned for his participation in the Royal Danish Arabia Expedition (1761-1767). He was the father of the Danish-German statesman and historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who published an account of his father's life in 1817.
WWilliam Gifford Palgrave was an English priest, soldier, traveller, and Arabist.
WHarry St John Bridger Philby, CIE, also known as Jack Philby or Sheikh Abdullah, was a British Arabist, adviser, explorer, writer, and Colonial Office intelligence officer.
WCarl August Rathjens was a German geographer whose primary interests were in South Arabian historiography, geology and ethnography. He made several visits to Yemen, in the years 1927, 1931, 1934 and 1938. He is considered the greatest scholar of Yemeni research in the 20th century. He contributed more than any other in conducting scientific and ethnographic research, resulting in a wide range of findings, and he has left over 2500 ethnographical items and some 4000 positive and negative photographs from South Arabia.
WEmil Riebeck was a German explorer, mineralogist, ethnologist, and naturalist. He was born in Preusslitz to Carl Adolf Riebeck, an industrial magnate. He traveled to North Africa and Arabia several times, and in 1881 travelled with Georg Schweinfurth on an expedition to Socotra. He traveled with Adolf Bastian to the hills of Chittagong in 1882.
WUlrich Jasper Seetzen was a German explorer of Arabia and Palestine from Jever, German Frisia. An alternate spelling of his name, Ulrich Iospar Sentzen, is sometimes seen in scientific publications.
WCaptain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, was a British civil servant and explorer who mapped uncharted areas of Northern Arabia and made the first official British contact with Ibn Sa'ud, future king of Saudi Arabia. He was the military adviser to Ibn Sa'ud from 1910 to 1915, when he was shot and killed in the Battle of Jarrab by Ibn Shraim.
WChristiaan Snouck Hurgronje was a Dutch scholar of Oriental cultures and languages and Advisor on Native Affairs to the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies.
WDame Freya Madeline Stark, was an Anglo-Italian explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan as well as several autobiographical works and essays. She was one of the first non-Arabs to travel through the southern Arabian Desert.
WMax Steineke was a prominent American petroleum geologist. He was chief geologist at California-Arabian Standard Oil Co. (CASOC) from 1936 until 1950. His efforts, and persistence through repeated setbacks, led to the first discovery of oil in commercial quantities in Saudi Arabia, which took place at the well known as "Dammam No. 7" in March, 1938. He graduated from Stanford University in 1921 with an AB degree in geology. Steineke died in 1952.
WSir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger, also known by his Arabic name Mubarak bin London was a British military officer, explorer, and writer.
WGeorg (George) August Wallin was a Finnish orientalist, explorer and professor remembered for his journeys in the Middle East during the 1840s.
WJames Raymond Wellsted (1805–1842) was a lieutenant in the Indian navy who travelled extensively on the Arabian Peninsula in the 1830s.
WAnne Isabella Noel Blunt, 15th Baroness Wentworth, known for most of her life as Lady Anne Blunt, was co-founder, with her husband the poet Wilfrid Blunt, of the Crabbet Arabian Stud in England and the Sheykh Obeyd estate near Cairo. The two married on 8 June 1869. From the late 1870s, Wilfrid and Lady Anne travelled extensively in Arabia and the Middle East, buying Arabian horses from Bedouin tribesmen and the Egyptian Ali Pasha Sherif. Among the great and influential horses they took to England were Azrek, Dajania, Queen of Sheba, Rodania and the famous Ali Pasha Sherif stallion Mesaoud. To this day, the vast majority of purebred Arabian horses trace their lineage to at least one Crabbet ancestor.