Bertram Thomas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bertram Thomas (June 13, 1892 - December 27, 1950), was an English civil servant who is the first documented Westerner to cross the Rub' al Khali (Empty Quarter).

He was born in Easton in Gordano near Bristol and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. After working for the Civil Service, he served in Belgium during World War I before being posted to the Somerset Light Infantry in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) between 1916 and 1918. He worked as an Assistant Political Officer in this country from 1918 to 1922, and Assistant British Representative in Transjordan (now Jordan), from 1922 to 1924. He was appointed as Finance Minister and Wazir to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman (now Oman), a post he held from 1925 to 1932. In this capacity, he undertook a number of expeditions into the desert, and became the first European to cross the Rub' Al Khali from 1930 and 1931, a journey he described in Arabia Felix (1932), in which he described this desert’s animals, inhabitants, and culture.

A recent film called 'Crossing the Empty Quarter' was created by the Anglo-Oman Society's Chairman, Richard Muir - the ex-Ambassador to Oman - from footage taken by Thomas on his journey, and photographs from the Library of the Oriental Institute in Cambridge.

He returned to England and died in the house in which he was born, in 1950.