NIEBUHR, KARSTEN (1733-1815) German traveller, was born at Liidingworth, Lauenburg, Holstein, on March 17, 1733, the son of a farmer. He worked as a peasant in his early years, but managed to learn surveying. In 176o he was invited to join the expedition which was being sent out by Frederick V. of Denmark for the scientific exploration of Egypt, Arabia and Syria. He studied mathematics and Arabic for a year and a half before the expedition set out. The expedition sailed in January 1761, and, landing at Alexandria, ascended the Nile. Proceeding to Suez, Niebuhr visited Mount Sinai, and in October 1762 the expedition sailed from Suez to Jeddah, journeying thence overland to Mocha. Here in May 1763 the philologist of the expedition, van Haven, and the naturalist Forskal, died. Sana, the capital of Yemen, was visited, but the remaining members of the expedi tion were obliged to return to Mocha. Niebuhr saved his life and restored his health by adopting native dress and food. From Mocha the ship sailed to Bombay; the artist of the expedition and the surgeon died. Niebuhr was now the only surviving member of the expedition. He stayed fourteen months at Bombay, and then returned home by Muscat, Bushire, Shiraz and Persepolis, visited the ruins of Babylon, and thence went to Baghdad, Mosul and Aleppo. After a visit to Cyprus he toured Palestine, crossing
Mount Taurus to Brussa, reaching Constantinople in February 1767 and Copenhagen in the following November. He married in 1773, and held a post in the Danish military service and lived at Copenhagen. In 1778 he accepted a position in the civil service of Holstein, and went to reside at Meldorf, where he died on April 26, 1815.
He published Beschreibung von Arabien (1772) ; Reisebeschreibung von Arabien and anderen umliegenden Landern (2 vols., 1774-78) besides papers in Deutsches Museum. He also edited Forskal's Descrip tiones animalium, Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, and Icones rerum natu ralium .
French and Dutch translations of his narratives were published dur ing his lifetime, and a condensed English translation, by Robert Heron, of the first three volumes in Edinburgh (1792). His son Barthold (see above) published a short Life at Kiel in 1817 ; an English version was issued in 1838 in the Lives of Eminent Men, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. See D. G. Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia ("Story of Exploration" series) (1904) .