Philby, Harry St. John Bridger

Related Category: Middle Eastern History: Biographies

1885–1960, British explorer, official, and author. He joined (1917) the British foreign service, was sent on a special mission to Arabia, and became the first European to visit the southern provinces of the Nejd. For some 30 years he was an adviser to King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Dissatisfied with British policy in the Middle East, he resigned (1930) from the foreign service, became a Muslim, and took the name of Hajj Abdullah.

See his Heart of Arabia (1923), Sa'udi Arabia (1955), and Forty Years in the Wilderness (1957).