The New International Encyclopædia/Niebuhr, Carsten

NIEBUHR, (1733-1815). A German traveler, father of the preceding, born at Lüdingworth in Hanover, where his father was a small farmer. He entered the University of Göttingen, and in 1760 became a lieutenant of engineers in the Danish army. The next year he sailed with the expedition sent out by Frederick V. of Denmark to explore Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. His companions, the best known of whom was the naturalist Forskål (q.v.), all died of hardship or disease, but Niebuhr continued alone and only after six years of wandering did he return to Europe. The results of his observations appeared in Beschreibung von Arabien (1772); Reisebeschreibung von Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern (1774-78); and Reisen durch Syrien und Palästina (1837). He also brought out the results of Forskål's work under the titles Descriptiones Animalium (1775), Flora Ægyptiaco-Arabica (1776), and Icones Rerum Naturalium (1775-76); and contributed a number of papers to the German periodical Deutsches Museum. The accurate observation and the unswerving truthfulness of their author place these works among the most reliable books on the lands which they describe. In 1778 Niebuhr entered the civil service and removed from Copenhagen to Meldorf, in Holstein, where he died. Consult Carsten Niebuhrs Leben (1816), by his son, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, an English version of which, by Mrs. Sarah Taylor Austin, was published in the Lives of Eminent Persons (London, 1833).