in 1934 In 1930 Thesiger returned to Africa, having received a personal invitation from
Emperor Haile Selassie to attend his coronation, and joined the
Order of the Star of Ethiopia. He returned again in 1933 as the leader of an expedition, funded in part by the
Royal Geographical Society, to explore the course of the
Awash River. During this expedition, he became one of the first Europeans to enter the
Aussa Sultanate and visit
Lake Abbe. Between 1935 and 1940, Thesiger served with the
Sudan Political Service, stationed in
Darfur and the
Upper Nile. for capturing
Agibar and its garrison of 2,500 Italian soldiers. He later served with the
Special Operations Executive in Syria and the
Special Air Service during the
North African Campaign, attaining the rank of
Major. From 1943 to 1945 he acted as political adviser to Crown Prince
Asfa Wossen of Ethiopia. He is remembered for his Arabian expeditions. In 1945, an
entomologist, O.B. Lean, acting on behalf of the Middle East Anti Locust Unit (MEALU), hired Thesiger to search for locust breeding grounds in
southern Arabia. This led to two crossings of the great Arabian desert, the
Rub' al Khali or Empty Quarter, and travels in inner
Oman. He rode camels in the company of
Bedu guides through remote areas that were potentially dangerous on account of tribal tensions and the opposition of local rulers to the presence of foreigners. His first camel expedition began in Salala (Oman) on 13.10.1945 and ended in Tarim (Yemen) on 22.02.1946. Thesiger's first large desert crossing began in October 1946 when, with his Bedouin companions, he left
Salalah in the Dhofar province of Oman and travelled to the Mughshin Oasis. From there, he entered the sands but there was dissent among his party, some of whom were unwilling to travel any farther. Thesiger continued with four members, two from the Rashid and two from the Bait Kathir tribes. He reached the
Liwa Oasis in the
Emirate of Abu Dhabi in mid-December, visited the town of
Abu Dhabi, then crossed into Oman, heading back towards Salalah via Dhofar and ending his journey at Salalah on 23 February 1947. He is known for two travel books:
Arabian Sands (1959), which recounts his travels in the Empty Quarter of Arabia between 1945 and 1950 and describes the vanishing way of life of the Bedu; and
The Marsh Arabs (1964), which is an account of the
Madan, the indigenous people of the marshlands of southern Iraq. In the latter he recorded information on Madan gender identities, particularly the
mustarjil. The latter journey is also covered by his travelling companion,
Gavin Maxwell, in
A Reed Shaken by the Wind – a Journey through the Unexplored Marshlands of Iraq (
Longman, 1957; new edition by
Eland in 2003). Thesiger returned to England in the 1990s and was knighted in the
1995 Birthday Honours. In 1998, he published his travel memoir,
Among the Mountains detailing his travels across Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan. Thesiger took many photographs during his travels and donated his vast collection of 38,000 negatives to the
Pitt Rivers Museum,
Oxford. ==Reputation==