As one local saying goes: “One who can exit it, must be born again, while those inside, remain missing.” The Rub Al-Khali is characterized by a scarcity of water resources, a maze of sand dunes where it is easy to lose one’s way, and extreme heat. To this day, it is believed that entering this desert without a guide is akin to suicide.
Philby popularized the name “Empty Quarter,” claiming this was the term used by the Bedouin who dwelled there, owing to its vast, largely empty terrain, devoid of human settlements besides the shelters of the roaming Bedouin tribes, who still inhabit the region today. He recorded his journey with precision, noting not only the natural landscape and its geology but also the moments of physical and mental struggle that it took to cross this seemingly infinite terrain, which covers 650,000 sq km, an area roughly the size of France. He described it to his wife Dora as “this beastly obsession which has so completely sidetracked me for the best years of my life.” John Philby crossed the Empty Quarter on camelback.įor 20 years he dreamed of the crossing. Then, about two years later, the great English explorer Harry St. In 1930, Omani Sheikh Saleh bin Khalut and English explorer Bertram Thomas made the first recorded crossing of the Rub Al-Khali. It was in this vast desert that King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s founder and first monarch, made camp before capturing Riyadh from the rival Al-Rashid family in 1902, thereby establishing supremacy over the Najd region of central Arabia.Ī team led by Omani-based British explorer Mark Evans trekked across the world’s largest sand desert in 2016.
The Empty Quarter occupies a special place in the Saudi consciousness. However, it was not until the early 20th century that the first recorded voyages across this beautiful yet dangerously vast landscape were first published. Throughout history men and women have been lured by the beauty of its undulating dunes, punctuated by rare patches of lush vegetation and palms.
The largest segment of the world’s biggest sand desert, which ecompasses much of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula, is located in Saudi Arabia, stretching to the south and east into Oman, the UAE and Yemen. RIYADH: Known for its mystical beauty and seemingly endless horizons, the Empty Quarter, or Rub Al-Khali as it is translated in Arabic, has long been one of the great subjects of curiosity for the world’s most daring explorers.
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