Carsten Niebuhr

Niebuhr was born in Lüdingworth (now a part of Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony) in what was then Bremen-Verden. His father Barthold Niebuhr (1704-1749) was a successful farmer and owned his own property. Carsten and his sister were educated at home by a local school teacher, then he attended the Latin School in Otterndorf, near Cuxhaven. Originally Niebuhr had intended to become a surveyor, but in 1757 he went to the Georgia Augusta University of Göttingen, at this time Germany's most progressive institution of higher education. Niebuhr was probably a bright student because in 1760 Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791) recommended him as a participant in the Danish Arabia expedition (1761-1767), mounted by Frederick V of Denmark (1722–1766). For a year and a half before the expedition Niebuhr studied mathematics, cartography and navigational astronomy under Tobias Mayer (1723–1762), one of the premier astronomers of the 18th century, and the author of the Lunar Distance Method for determining longitude. Niebuhr's observations during the Arabia Expedition proved the accuracy and the practicality of this method for use by mariners at sea.

In the summer of 1772, an embassy from the Regency of Tripoli arrived in Copenhagen. Carsten Niebhur was asked to assist the official interpreter, Andreas Æreboe, who did not have a sufficient command of Arabic. The embassy was led by the Tripolitan diplomat and statesman Abd-al-Rahman Aga, who had been a frequent visitor to European courts since 1763. The two men met for the first time at the Tripolitan ambassador’s residence on July 5, and then on numerous occasions thereafter, until November 1772. During these meetings, a very fruitful intellectual collaboration developed, involving the exchange of manuscripts and translations. Niebhur then wrote a series of articles drawing on the knowledge of Abd-al-Rahman Aga, as well as that of two of his enslaved servants who had accompanied him to Copenhagen—one from Timbuktu and the other from Hausaland. This series of articles consists of “observations by a figure from Tripoli on the interior of Africa, cross-referenced with the accounts of two African servants or slaves, then analyzed and narrated by a German explorer specializing in Arabia”. The text also contains the first list of Hausa language vocabulary ever transcribed into Latin script. It is therefore an exceptional source for the history of the co-production of knowledge between African and European intellectuals.

In 1773, Niebuhr married Christiane Sophia Blumenberg, the daughter of the crown physician, and for some years he held a post in the Danish military service, which enabled him to remain in Copenhagen. In 1776 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1778 he accepted a position in the civil service of Danish Holstein, and went to reside at Meldorf (Ditmarschen). In 1806 he was promoted to Etatsrat, and in 1809 was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, one of Denmark–Norway's most valued honours for service.

Niebuhr's first book, Beschreibung von Arabien, was published in Copenhagen in 1772, the Danish government providing subsidies for the engraving and printing of its numerous illustrations. This was followed in 1774 and 1778 by the first two volumes of Niebuhr's Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegender Ländern. These works (particularly the one published in 1778), and most specifically the accurate copies of the cuneiform inscriptions found at Persepolis, were to prove to be extremely important to the decipherment of cuneiform writing. Before Niebuhr's publication, cuneiform inscriptions were often thought to be merely decorations and embellishments, and no accurate decipherments or translations had been made up to that point. Niebuhr demonstrated that the three trilingual inscriptions found at Persepolis were in fact three distinct forms of cuneiform writing (which he termed Class I, Class II, and Class III) to be read from left to right. His accurate copies of the trilingual inscriptions gave Orientalists the key to finally crack the cuneiform code, leading to the discovery of Old Persian, Akkadian, and Sumerian. The third volume of the Reisebeschreibung, also based on materials from the expedition, was not published till 1837, long after Niebuhr's death, under the editorship of his daughter and his assistant, Johan Nicolaus Gloyer. Niebuhr also contributed papers on the interior of Africa, the political and military condition of the Ottoman Empire, and other subjects to a German periodical, the Deutsches Museum. In addition, he edited and published the work of his friend Peter Forsskål, the naturalist on the Arabian expedition, under the titles Descriptiones animalium, Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica and Icones rerum naturalium (Copenhagen, 1775 and 1776). Between 1790 and 1791, Niebuhr finally published the results of his collaboration with Abd-al-Rahman Aga and his two slaves in the Deutsches Museum's journal, Neues Deutsches Museum, in the form of four articles: “Das Innere von Afrika” (1790), “Noch Etwas Über die Mohammedanischen Freistaaten in der Barbarei” (1791), “Noch Etwas Über die Mohammedanischen Freistaaten in der Barbarei” (1791), and “Noch Etwas Über das Innere von Afrika” (1791). French and Dutch translations of Niebuhr's narratives were published during his lifetime, and a condensed English translation of his own three volumes, prepared by Robert Heron, was published in Edinburgh in 1792, under the title "Travels through Arabia". A facsimile edition of this translation, as by "M. Niebuhr", was published in two volumes by the Libraire du Liban, Beirut (undated). The government funds covered only a fraction of the printing costs for Niebuhr's first book, and probably a similar or smaller proportion of the costs for the other two volumes. To ensure that the volumes were published, Niebuhr had to pay over 80% of the costs himself. In all, Niebuhr devoted ten years of his life, the years 1768–1778, to the publication of six volumes of findings from the expedition. He had virtually no help from the academics who had conceived and shaped the expedition in Göttingen and Copenhagen. It was only Niebuhr's determination to publish the findings of the expedition that ensured that the Danish Arabia expedition would produce results that would benefit the world of scholarship.

Niebuhr, Carsten. Beschreibung von Arabien. Aus eigenen Beobachtungen und im Lande selbst gesammleten Nachrichten. Copenhagen, 1772. Niebuhr, Carsten. Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegender Ländern. 2 vols. Copenhagen, 1774–1778. Niebuhr, Carsten. "Über Längen-Beobachtungen im Orient u.s.w. Aus einem Schreiben des königl. Dänischen geheimer Justiz-Raths Carsten Niebuhr". Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmels-Kunde 4 (1801), pp. 240–253. Niebuhr, Carsten. Biographische Nachrichten aus Tobias Mayer's Jugendjahren aus einem Schreiben des Königlich Dänischen Justiz-Raths C. Niebuhr, Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd-und Himmels-Kunde 8 (1803), pp. 45–56, and 9 (1804), pp. 487–491. Niebuhr, Carsten. Reisebescheibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern. Vol. 3. Carsten Niebuhr Reisen durch Syrien und Palästina, nach Cypern, und durch Kleinasien und die Türkei nach Deutschland und Dännemark, edited by J. N.Gloyer and J. Olshausen. Hamburg, 1837. Niebuhr, Carsten. Rejsebeskrivele fra Arabien og andre omkringliggende Lande, translated by Hans Christian Fink, with an introduction by Michhael Harbsmeier. 2 vols., Copenhagen, 2003. Niebuhr, Carsten. Beskrivelse af Arabien ud fra egne iagttagelser og i landet selv samlede efterretinger, translated by Hans Christian Fink, with an introduction by Niels Peter Lemche. Copenhagen, 2009.

Niebuhr, Carsten. "Das Innere von Afrika". Neues Deutsche Museum 2 (1790), pp. 963-1003. Niebuhr, Carsten. "Noch Etwas Über die Mohammedanischen Freistaaten in der Barbarei". Neues Deutsche Museum 1 (1791), pp. 1-26. Niebuhr, Carsten. "Noch Etwas Über die Mohammedanischen Freistaaten in der Barbarei". Neues Deutsche Museum 2 (1791), pp. 115-133. Niebuhr, Carsten. "Noch Etwas Über das Innere von Afrika". Neues Deutsche Museum 3 (1791), pp. 419-435.