Salim bin Kabina

Seated portrait of Salim bin Kabina, one of Wilfred Thesiger's travelling companions, riding a camel during the party's journey from Jabal Sumeini to the port city of Sharjah.Above and beyond all his other Bedouin companions, Wilfred Thesiger was most closely attached to Salim bin Kabina, a teenage boy from the Bayt Imani lineage of Rashid Bedouin. After their meeting in Wadi Khawat in the winter of 1945–6, Salim bin Kabina accompanied Wilfred Thesiger on all of his subsequent journeys in Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, and was the only one of Thesiger's Bedouin companions to do so.

Son of Salim bin Kalut and half-brother to Muhammad bin Kalut, Salim bin Kabina was approximately seventeen years old in 1948 when he completed his second journey across the Empty Quarter with Thesiger's party (1960: 200). Wilfred Thesiger's letters and diaries record a close bond between the two, with Thesiger often referring to Salim bin Kabina by nicknames such as 'Binkey' and 'Bin K'. Thesiger's entries detail their relationship as an important source of comfort, laughter and companionship which supported Thesiger through the many challenges presented by the harsh desert terrain and the nomadic Bedouin lifestyle. In Arabian Sands, Thesiger wrote that his friendship with Salim bin Kabina 'eased the inevitable strain under which I lived, anticipating my wants. His comradeship provided a personal note in the still rather impersonal atmosphere of my desert life' (1960: 56).

References

Wilfred Thesiger, 1960. Arabian Sands, Longmans, Green and Co Ltd: London.

Photographs of Salim bin Kabina