Philby, Harry St. John Bridger
Philby, Harry St. John Bridger,
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 SaudIbn Saud(Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud) , c.1880–1953, founder of Saudi Arabia and its first king. His family, with its regular seat at Riyadh in the Nejd, were the traditional leaders of the ultraorthodox Wahhabi movement in Islam.
..... Click the link for more information. 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.
Bibliography
See his Heart of Arabia (1923), Sa'udi Arabia (1955), and Forty Years in the Wilderness (1957).